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If you are involved in extrusion processing of virtually any kind, you’ll want to check out the Extrusion 2022 Conference. It will be held Dec. 6-8 at the Omni Charlotte Hotel, Charlotte, N.C., and if you register before Nov. 5 you can save yourself a couple of hundred bucks.

Now in its eight year, the Extrusion Conference is organized so that you can maximize the time the opportunity to learn and network. We have three morning sessions — what we call General Sessions — with presentations that apply to your operations regardless of what is coming out of your die. Topics covered here range from screw design to purging to drying to control systems to barrel wear to feeding to conveying…and virtually everything else in between.

Photo Credit: Gardner Business Media

We’ve assembled a virtual who’s who in global experts to speak during these three General Sessions. Likely you are familiar with the names Chris Rauwendaal, Tim Womer, John Christiano, Charlie Martin, Mark Haynie, Bill Goldfarb, Dana Darley —to name a few —and the credentials they carry with them to the podium.

There will be some talk about “big data,” particularly how to apply it. Chris Rauwendaal will be presenting thrice, including how a high-speed data acquisition and analysis system installed in several extrusion plants impacted their operation. John Christiano will talk about how using smart extrusion technology can improve productivity. Willem Sundblad will discuss how to leverage data to improve decision-making.

And there will be two talks in our General Sessions about Artificial Intelligence? AI in extrusion? It’s here. Microsoft will be talking about using artificial intelligence to reduce start-up time and cost, limit specification drift, and ensure consistent quality control. And you will learn from Olivier Fontana of Neal Analytics how PepsiCo used artificial intelligence for food extrusion processes that can also be applied to polymer extrusion.

Topics like big data and AI may seem a bit daunting to most plastics processing operations, but let’s face it: you are all facing workforce shortages, and the more automation you can build into your process, the better. It behooves you to know what’s coming down the pike.

Read: Why Compression Ratio is Important

Anyway, the two afternoon sessions at Extrusion 2022 are concurrent. There is one on Film/Sheet, another on Pipe/Profile/Tubing, and a third on Compounding. I’ll delve a little deeper into these sessions in follow-up blogs. Speaking of compounding, there will be a pre-conference workshop on Best Practices in Compounding to be held at the nearby Polymers Center of Excellence. Space is limited there; don’t dawdle.

In the meantime, check out our Schedule at a Glance so you can see the entire program in one place. You can begin the registration process here. And don’t forget to book your room.