BIMU is a large metalworking machinery exhibition in Europe mainly dedicated to cutting chip production machines like turning and milling technologies. The main place for the exhibition is Fiera Milano in Italy. Mainly it is not “our” exhibition because today there are no tube and sheet metal deformation technologies and we permanently visit this exhibition just for the main view and to see how the main industry is feeling.
Purpose and numbers
10 years ago this exhibition was more varied with different technologies and solutions but today all processes for tube and sheet metal are transferred to the Italian “Lamiera” exhibition and Euroblech/ Blechexpo as the international show so the main players decided not to go to Bimu and left the space for cutting machinery.
The Europe market is serious but a little bit sensible with the last problems of energy costs, material costs, main inflation, currency rates, etc so we wanted also to see how is the industry feeling based on the exhibitors and visitors.
In numbers — this year Bimu registered nearly 700 exhibitors and 42000 visitors, abroad rate is 5 percent. It is a little bit less than the previous active show in 2018 — nearly the same exhibitors and 50000 visitors. The exhibitor’s dynamic is quite stable with visitors it is lower but also could be explained by light crisis conditions.
New technologies and trends
During the show interesting to see that we knew only the main brand names of robots for example and now the market is full of robots, automatic systems, and integrators (the companies which make complete industrial turn-key solutions based on industrial robots) we have never heard before. The growth of the market is really impressive, robots became cheaper and more affordable, and more automation solutions, more applications, and present achievements.
Also, it is nice to notice that everybody is trying to develop more innovative and modern designs for machines — more rounded corners, colors, CNC controls like fresh Apple tablets — it is hard to develop something new inside the machine so now it is a time to make it more fashion looking for the customer with really and really attractive views.
One more innovation and market development for today — addictive technologies, in particular, metal printing and this is really incredible, most of the parts do not require the highest tolerance. Plastic printing today is widely used but very limited to be adapted for the metalworking industry printing of metal can eliminate a lot of processes, moreover to create solid parts even if it was not possible before or together with final finishing to get the parts equally to original ones which were made with other processes before. Today soft materials are implemented but for sure will be more serious development even today there are various applications where additive manufacturing could be installed with great performance and the reduction of production time, part weight, and other advantages.
For sure all machines should be installed with modern software with the possibility to integrate into the complete management software of the factory with the possibility to control all the main parameters and functions with the use of Industry 4.0, moreover, such integration has the government support for taxes and savings for investment for new machinery, which makes it more actual and interesting for the customers.
Conclusion
For some machine tools producers Bimu is highly important — in Italy is the serious industry of big vertical turning lathes, milling machines, and machining centers and a lot of seriously presented subsidiaries with a lot of world-famous companies. The reason is quite simple — Italy is quite a large machine tool production market but also one of the biggest consumers of machine tools in Europe for various industries like automotive, aerospace, trains, naval, petrochemical, etc.
Also, it is interesting to know — based on the Italian industrial level, big machine tools manufacturing market, main population, and high levels of export and internal machinery consumption these exhibitions are quite big, popular, and effective compared to other local exhibitions in European countries. Moreover, we all believe that the reduction of COVID regulations and warnings will return international travel and business to the pre-Covid period, and expect more visitors from abroad next year.
This post is also published on @Medium
