On December 6, 2023, the Industry Forum SMART Surfaces, which was founded exactly 10 years ago, came together for its 20th working group meeting in Celle. As a founding member, it was a pleasure for ECOROLL AG to welcome the participants for the first time at our premises. Dr.-Ing. Benjamin Bergmann, head of production technologies at the Institute for Production Technology and Machine Tools (IFW) of the Leibniz University Hannover and managing director of the industry forum, warmly welcomed all participants on the morning of St. Nicholas’ Day together with Dr.-Ing. Oliver Maiß, head of development at ECOROLL AG.

As befits a round birthday, Christian Wege gave a brief review of the past years which was followed by a keynote speech by Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Bernd Breidenstein on the measurement of residual stresses in coatings.

As the review has shown, the Industry Forum SMART Surfaces has remained true to its founding promise to investigate the production of functional surfaces in a pre-competitive manner. Many of the projects from the last years were not aimed at individual processes, but always considered the entire process chain; for example, one of the first projects on the coating of cylinder liners and forming dies. Due to the broad range of participating companies, the production of geometrically determined machining (MAPAL), honing/superfinishing (Supfina), roller burnishing (ECOROLL) and coating (Oerlikon) could be studied in the project. The process steps were carried out in different sequences to ultimately achieve the greatest possible coating adhesion.

In addition to these more basic-oriented projects, very specific topics were also put to the test, such as how the potential of deep rolling can be exploited in lightweight construction or how to investigate the influence of surfaces on noise emissions in bearings for electromobility.

As with all working group meetings, the three current projects were then presented and discussed in detail. From the perspective of ECOROLL AG, the projects have a very high scientific level without drifting too much into theory. You can tell that the institute is interested in application-oriented research and that the benefit for the companies is always paramount. This is one of the reasons why we gladly continue to be part of the working group.

The highlight for the participants was a tour of the technology center and the production at ECOROLL AG. In the last 10 years, the meetings were held alternately in Hannover and then at the site of one of the participating companies. This unique glimpse into the production facilities of other companies is what makes the charm of such a working group for everyone. And so we were happy to open our doors on this day and give a small insight into the world of ECOROLL AG.