My first duty this quarter is to thank all of you who responded to our recent questionnaires on the MTFW and to welcome everyone who has gone the "extra mile" and decided to become a member of our Forum. Your input is essential to the buoyancy of the MTFW. It insures that we remain "up-date", relevant and
informative.

I hope to see some of you making a telling impact on the future policy of the MTFW by volunteering to join our Steering Committee. For those of you who are yet to make that important step towards membership, we have included a "membership registration" form with this bulletin. Remember a larger membership allows us to arrange more events and seminars, enhance our informative website and expand our technology transfer activities amongst the Materials Community in Wales.

The Bulletin is our means of keeping you informed of recent developments and future activities of the MTFW and other leading materials organisations. This month is no exception. Materials technology in Wales is evolving rapidly. The traditional large scale materials dominated industries have largely disappeared to be replaced by high performance smaller companies with a need to understand and exploit a wider range of materials types but with limited resources for the necessary supporting research. The change, therefore, has brought with it a requirement for highly focused research facilities and consultancy services for SMEs to access.

The recently launched Centres of Excellence focusing on the materials function meet this requirement. As promised in the last Bulletin, we are providing each of these Centres with an opportunity to inform you about their capabilities. This Bulletin focuses on the Centre of Excellence in Materials at the University of Wales Swansea.

The Forum will continue to organise highprofile events for its members during the forthcoming year while at the same time enhancing our commitment to technology transfer. In developing our programme, the Steering Committee have taken on board the results of the survey on member's requirements. On this basis forthcoming events will include Handling Systems for the Materials Industry, Plastics and Injection Moulding and a one-day seminar on composite materials made from natural resources. In each case, the MTFW will be working with other Fora or, in the case of the composites, with ACTIN - the Alternative Crops Technology Interaction Network.

Our prestigious event in June this year will feature the Centres of Excellence and will give members an opportunity to explore their requirements with appropriate expertise from the Centres. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that the MTFW will once again this year sponsor the WDA Technology Prize in "Design and Product Engineering".

If you wish to take advantage of the promotion associated with the awards event and the technical and financial support associated with the Prize, now is the time to begin preparing your contribution for the competition.

Thinking of Using a new material or process?
The revised MTFW website could be a useful starting point for your investigations.

Using the "Materials Directory" as a basis, websites of research, trade associations and learned bodies have been evaluated for their potential usefulness to MTFW members. Each website has been visited and assessed. The basis for the evaluation was:

• Technical support/advice - free or fee-based
  
• Quality information resources being freely available
  
• General website appearance and navigability
  
• Currency - when was the site last updated?

About 30 websites from the directory were selected as particularly useful. The chosen websites roughly split into two types, each type answering one of the following questions well:

1 I'm looking for some information about the properties of a material....

Here websites act as an information resource, trying to provide technical information and offering further help (possibly chargeable) once the user has some knowledge.

2 I have a particular problem with a material or process and I'm looking for some technical support or advice.

Often websites of research associations/technical centres act as a shop window for the services that they can provide. The website usually describes their services, fees and gives an e-mail for a specialist contact.

Websites acting for a specialist body where there are members are usually good for supplier/producer list. The lists are often searchable by product and geographical location and give address, telephone and fax together with a link to the company's website and an e-mail point of contact.

Plastics & Rubbers

British Plastics Foundation and
Plastics and Rubber Advisory Service
www.bpf.co.uk

Composites Processing Association
www.composites-proc-assoc.co.uk

Federation of Resin Formulators and Applications
www.ferfa.org.uk

Paint Research Association
www.pra.org.uk

British Plastics Federation
www.bpf.co.uk

RAPRA Tech
www.rapra.net