First-ever IMTECH comes together in Chicago

Oak Brook, Ill. — The first-ever IMTECH — "I-M" for injection molding — came together in just six months, as organizers quickly swung into action.

IMTECH drew 185 attendees to Oak Brook on Aug. 1-3. They heard 41 technical presentations on topics such as molding simulation, Industry 4.0, material additives and mold issues that included tooling for liquid silicone molding, conformal cooling and valve gating.

IMTECH guests also could attend plant tours of injection molding press makers Sodick Plustech Co. Ltd. in Schaumburg, Ill., and Wittmann Battenfeld Inc.'s Midwest Tech Center in South Elgin, Ill.

Conference Chair David Okonski said 200 people registered for the inaugural IMTECH, sponsored by the Society of Plastics Engineers' Injection Molding Division.

"So we're very happy with those numbers for the first time for the conference," he said. "But we want to develop it into the conference of choice for manufacturing engineers within the injection molding industry."

Okonski said he wants IMTECH to grow to around 400 to 600 attendees within the next three to five years.

But just two weeks before the SPE injection molding conference, only 68 people had registered.

"We were worried, I tell you. Very," said Peter Grelle, the technical chair for IMTECH.

Canceling a first-ever conference would have cost the Injection Molding Division big bucks. And then you have a critical loss of credibility for a new event.

Okonski and Grelle, who have known each other a long time through plastics events, are SPE veterans who had been tossing ideas back and forth for an injection molding conference. Grelle, a 45-year SPE member, handled the presentations, and Okonski, who joined SPE's Injection Molding Division, was the point person for questions and headed up marketing.

Grelle has lots of conference planning experience, including technical program work. "I've been involved with the SPE conferences as well as other organizations over the last 25 years. And I've done almost 25 conferences in that period of time," he said.

"The thing I learned, over that period of time, is you have to spend a good year if you want to do the planning. If you want a program to be established, getting the papers, and doing all that type of legwork. One year. And if you try less than that, you're in trouble," he said.

Two simultaneous things happened earlier this year to push an actual conference.

Russell Broome, managing director of SPE, contacted the Injection Molding Division's board of directors and urged them to hold a technical event. (Grelle said the last conference the division did was a Retec in 2008.)

Meanwhile, Okonski and Grelle had started talking about doing the division's own conference for plastics engineers. Okonski at the time was chair of the Injection Molding Division. Broome contacted them last November.

The division is active in SPE's major yearly conference, Antec. But Antec attendance is not as big as it once was, and critics say there are way too many academics presenting papers.

Just a week after IMTECH, Broome said he was leaving SPE, ending three years at the society based in Bethel, Conn.

Okonski said that he, Grelle and Broome put together a concept for a technical conference and pitched the idea to the board of the Injection Molding Division. Okonski is staff research engineer in General Motors Co.'s Manufacturing Systems Research Lab at the GM global research and development center in Warren, Mich. Grelle is president and owner of Plastics Fundamentals Group LLC of West Bloomfield, Mich., which does training and consulting.

Division leaders approved IMTECH, and then the six-month countdown began. Many board members took leading roles to help the process move quickly, Grelle said.

"We didn't have to look" for volunteers, Grelle said: "They jumped up and said, 'This is something we wanna do, here's your chance!' And they just jumped in with no hesitation."

The leaders held conference calls twice a month, keeping updated in between by Google Docs. About a month before IMTECH, the calls came every week.

Grelle issued a formal "call for papers" in early April, but by then, the committee was starting to hone in, with about 18 topics that got winnowed down to six.

"And then we built the conference from that," Grelle said. He said 12 session co-chairs did a lot of the hard work.

IMTECH also got an assist from SPE's Next Generation Advisory Board. The NGAB helped out at the registration table, sessions and the plant tours, said its chair, Mercedes Landazuri. The group also held a cookout and volleyball game one evening.

"I've been really impressed with the attendance. The plant tours were absolutely fantastic. We had a blast," she said. "The companies that we visited were very good."

Landazuri is in customer relations at Apex Colors Inc. in Skokie, Ill.

Broome said the IMTECH organizers reached out to marketing firms in the plastics industry for help in promotions, Ladder Up Marketing Inc., Vive LLC and S!Y Communications. The Manufacturers Association of Plastics Processors also helped.

"I think the first year [for IMTECH], it turned out great," Broome said. "The cards were stacked against us, but we decided to go ahead and create a buzz and get some momentum before an NPE next year."

Okonski said the conference game is very competitive with lots of events, and some employees only get approval to attend one conference a year. "You have to prove your merit," he said. "We wanted to provide good technical content, innovation-based stuff, that people see the value and we can grow to bigger numbers."

The technical sessions attracted Ben Passetti, cell manager and process engineer at Tessy Plastics Corp. in Elbridge, N.Y. "It's good," he said of IMTECH. "I came in not really knowing what to expect. The agenda is what convinced me to come. The agenda is much different from other shows and conferences I've been to." Passetti was particularly attracted to sessions on nucleating agents and LSR.

Alex Beaumont, technical sales manager of Beaumont Technologies in Erie, Pa., serves on the Injection Molding Division's board.

"The biggest thing was the time frame," he said. "They got a lot of good speakers. The tours were good, and it keeps people from getting bored from sitting around all day."