Editorial

 The IRT3000 magazine has spent the year breathing with the basketball players. To do some promotion, we have also assembled a basketball robot. Numerous visitors were able to join us at various sport and professional events and compete with our robot.
Robotic basketball was also presented in the "Raketa na Planetu" show on Planet TV. Shortly after the EuroBasket Championship was concluded, this music entertainment show, which attracts a lot of viewers in front of their TV screens every Sunday evening, focused on the influence of this huge sports event on the domestic economy. The IRT3000 magazine has taken up the challenge in a really professional way and proved that Slovenians are folks of innovation.

 At the NIDays conference, the measurement solution and instruments giant traditionally shares the novelties with the Slovenian companies and presents case studies of business process improvement and value adding.
As usually, this year's main lecture at the NIDays 2013 conference, hosted by the Mons hotel in Ljubljana end of October, provided the attendees with an overview of the state-of-the-art, as well as the emerging and future technologies for measurement, automated testing and control. The conference attendees also learned how platform-based design approach can help solve even the toughest engineering challenges.   

 Tox Pressotechnik's joining technology has all what it takes to make the best of the light construction boom. The amazing electrical properties of clinched joints will surely help, e.g. in the production of Li-ion batteries.
"Our clinching technology is gaining importance with the development of lightweight constructions and material variability," reports with content Wolfgang Pfeiffer, CEO at Tox Pressotechnik. While there have been no recent major developments in welding steel, aluminium, plastics, paper and textile, Tox Pressotechnik has managed to successfully join paper-thin material using needle-sized tools. 

 The doors of traditional K 2013 fair closed in October. The Europe's largest plastics processing fair, which attracted 3100 exhibitors from 60 countries this year, took place from October 16 to 23 at the Düsseldorf fairgrounds. Once again, it has woven all the threads of the plastics processing industry in a widest sense of the word.
Injection moulding, extruding, thermoforming, blowing, welding, grinding ... all these technologies were put on display for a week – a time not long enough for a fair of this size. The visitors were presented with everything necessary for a modern manufacturing process, from materials and additives to injection moulding, extrusion and thermoforming machines, drying and dosing equipment, manipulators, mills ... 

 Nazarje in the Upper Savinja Valley is the home of company BSH Hišni aparati. Small home appliances have been manufactured in Nazarje for more than forty years. This year marks the 20th anniversary since the company has been owned by the BSH group, one of the three leading companies in the industry and the convincing market leader in the Western Europe – also thanks to the role of Slovenian factory in the development.
In the last decade, BSH Hišni aparati has evolved from a manufacturing plant into a modern development and production center for all types of small motor-powered home appliances for the preparation of food and thermal appliances for the preparation of beverages. The appliances made in Nazarje cater the world markets under the trademarks Bosch, Siemens, Gaggenau, Ufesa and Profile, and almost 99 % of production is exported. The company's annual turnover exceeds 300 million Euro.   

 ENGEL protect and ENGEL protect+ are setting new standards in injection moulding machine maintenance. Both service packages protect plastics processors from repair costs and considerably improve the availability of machines and devices.
Maintenance costs are difficult to plan, especially if injection moulding machines are used to make several different products with varying demands. New service packages enable the users to plan their production with safety. The ENGEL protect insurance covers all faults not arising from machine wear or handling. The service includes spare parts, transport and technical service solutions, either by telephone or on the location. ENGEL protect+ goes a step further and also includes wear parts. The exception are elements subjected to plastification wear. 

 Measuring is a part of our everyday life and something taken for granted by most people. The present article will show this is not true. Taking a look back into the history, we see measuring is tightly woven with the development of the mankind.
Measuring devices and reference standards were necessary to build the pyramids and other ancient structures. Land ownership and the beginning of farming gave birth to a need for measuring large distances. The exploration of new words made navigation techniques more precise and the development of firearms brought quick dimension checking devices and standardisation of measurement procedures. Once the first cars started driving from the manufacturing lines, measuring was joined by automation at the speed of light. The best example are automated multi-axis measuring machines or coordinate measuring machines. Gregor Demšar 

 The international activities and the world economic crisis during the last years have led to a thriving discussion about the enormous energy costs, dangerous consequences of gas emissions and threats to the world's water inventory. A lot of ink has been spilt on the topic of manufacturing, use and removal of ICT equipment.
Major business analysts see the so-called green ICT as one of the 10 most important strategic trends and technologies. According to the last Cisco Visual Networking Index, data transfer through mobile devices and systems last year reached a whooping 0.9 exabyte per month, or 10.8 EB annually (one exabyte is a billion billion or 1018 bytes). According to Cisco VNI, the mobile data traffic will reach 19.2 exabyte in the period 2012–2017.   

 "4D-printing is an emerging technology, where the look and shape of printed 3D-material changes in time. This means that printed materials are able to assemble themselves by reacting with one another and transforming themselves into the final shape," says dr. Skylar Tibbits, head of the interdisciplinary Self-assembly laboratory at Boston's MIT. The architect, designer and IT-expert works in tandem with dr. Marcelo Coelho. The researcher at MIT studies interactions between IT and materials, where the latter are a sort of interface between the physical and the digital world. "Smart people and smart machines need smart, active materials." The research group is completed by Natan Linder, cofounder of Formlabs, and industrial designer Yoav Reches.
At this year's Ars Electronica festival, the group has won the idea of the future award for its Hyperform research project. Although 3D-printers are becoming more and more accessible and of competitive quality, the applications are limited to smaller objects with several limitations, with rare exceptions such as Enrico Dini's D-Shape 3D-printer.