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This Just In

Four Associations Unite for Co-Located METALFORM, FABTECH, AWS Welding Show

HIL ANDERSON, SENIOR EDITOR

Dearborn, MI – Two major shows for the welding, fabrication and other heavy-metal manufacturing industries will be combined into a co-located event that will launch next year at McCormick Place following a “soft start” this Fall at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The events will bring together METALFORM and the FABTECH International & AWS Welding Show in a one-stop extravaganza that is expected to top 650,000 net square feet when it officially debuts in Chicago in November 2009.

The event also teams up four separate associations that operate in the same industrial bailiwick: the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the American Welding Society and the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association, which organize FABTECH show, and the Precision Metalforming Association, organizers of METALFORM. “This alliance will deliver the broadest array of metalforming, fabricating, cutting and joining technologies for manufacturing,” said SME executive director Mark Tomlinson. “Manufacturers need comprehensive exposure to every one of these technologies, and now they only have to go to one show to find them.”

The soft launch in Las Vegas will take place at what is officially the FABTECH International & AWS Welding Show. METALFORM will be represented at the show witha separate pavilion where products for the metal stamping industry will be on display.

The respective shows will offer independent education programs while the co-location agreement will expand the exhibit floor.  The 2007 METALFORM exhibit area covered 92,000 net square feet at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. The FABTECH International & AWS Welding Show held at McCormick Place stretched 461,627 net square feet.

The 2010 shows will take place at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.

Reach Mark Tomlinson at (313) 425-3000 or leadership@sme.org; William Gaskin, president of Precision Metalforming Association, at (216) 901-9190 or wgaskin@pma.org; Gerald M. Shankel, FMA president and CEO  (800)432-2832 or info@fmanet.org; Ray Shook, AWS executive director, (800) 443-9353 or info@aws.org

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