IMTS 2006 ran from Sept. 6 through 13 at Chicago's McCormick Place and, as the largest trade show dedicated to manufacturing in the western hemisphere, it included many welding equipment companies.

The show had 152 exhibitors listed as metal forming, fabricating and laser vendors; more than 1/10th of the 1,200 exhibitors that were there. The hall that housed those vendors looked like FabTech trade shows I've attended in the past, and featured such names as Lincoln Electric and ESAB.

While events such as IMTS are great for demonstrating new technologies, one of the outstanding features of this year's show were demonstrations that existing technologies could be combined to produce advances that neither could achieve on their own.

Sodick Co. Ltd., a company that produces wire electrical discharge machines (wire EDMs), debuted a machine that combined abrasive water-jet cutting with an EDM. The waterjet provided the first, rough cut for the workpiece, while the EDM performed the finish cut.

Both the water-jet and the EDM were mounted on a three-axis machining head that is typical for a wire EDM machine. Sodick representatives said the combination eliminated the need for multipass cutting, and increased productivity. The company was certain that its machine combined technologies in a unique way and, leading up to the trade show, it teased its potential customers by calling it the "x-machine."

ESAB demonstrated similar combined technologies, with a hybrid welding systems that puts laser and conventional GMAW welding equipment together. ESAB said its hybrid is the first to combine mechanized laser welding with GMAW in a commercially available unit. It can use any of three laser welding technologies laser only; laser with cold wire fill; or hybrid laser/MIG.

Combining laser and GMAW processes, said ESAB's booth people, cuts the amount of heat infusion into the part, and reduces part deformation while increasing the speed of welding. As with Sodick's combination of abrasive waterjet and wire EDM technologies, the benefits of combining laser and GMAW welding include increased productivity and improved cost efficiency.

In addition, ESAB says its combined technologies produce more robust welds in weld gaps that are as much as four times wider than other laser-only welding techniques can join, while using lower quantities of filler wire.

These types of crossbred machines are, in part, the reason to have a trade show.

Besides providing platforms for presenting and selling the latest advances in equipment, shows like IMTS give everyone in attendance create a fertile atmosphere for equipment designers.

Anyone walking the show floor potentially will see technology they might need to fill the orders in their shops. The chance also is there for anyone to get the idea that two technologies were made for each other (like peanut butter and chocolate (as a candy advertisement once suggested). With just a bit of thought and work, what were once different techniques and processes may be pulled together in time to wow people at the next show.