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A team of Mate sales engineers and application specialists recently returned from Mexico City, where they attended FABTECH Mexico 2016. With a growing manufacturing base and a strong sheet metal fabrication industry, we were excited to share our latest tooling solutions to the Mexican market and delve into the application challenges workers there are facing when bending, punching and cutting metal.

If you weren’t able to attend the show, we wanted to bring you some of the highlights. We should start by noting the strong turnout. According to show organizers, FABTECH Mexico 2016 broke attendance records with more 12,500 attendees and 550 exhibitors. Traffic to our booth was steady, and we were happy to see so many current customers stop by our booth to say hello and ask a few questions. Through these discussions a few trends related to sheet metal fabrication in Mexico began to emerge that we will evaluate.

We also had a Mate application specialist in our booth for the first time and received a lot questions about special applications using older machines. This is a reality many fabricators face, not just in Mexico, and we were happy to share our knowledge and help devise solutions. We strongly believe it’s this level of firsthand experience that sets us apart from other manufacturers.

It was also encouraging to see that attendees understood the importance of regular maintenance for their punch press tooling. Sharp tooling leads to a cleaner punch, longer machine uptime and extended life for your tooling. As such, many visitors to our booth spent quite a bit of time reviewing our Premia sharpening system and ValuGrind grinder.

FABTECH Mexico was a great show and we’re looking forward to getting back next year. If we missed you at the show, please feel free to contact the Mate sales engineer in your area or Contact Us and we’ll be sure to respond quickly.