Around 9 a.m., we were warmly welcomed to The Old Boiler House on the outskirts of Düsseldorf. What a great location for such an industrial event. Before the start there was plenty of time to meet each other and have a look at the various stands. Different divisions of 3M presented themselves, such as the division safety and fall protection. There were also several workshops to follow and you could virtually on an offshore platform with your angle grinder to work. Between the competitions, there was a spectacular act of a fire breather.

Slowly but surely, the participants in the competition trickle in, supported by their supporters. There are three participants from the Netherlands. One woman reported to the battlefield. The 20 grinders come together for instruction, the distribution of clothing and they may choose their PPE. They get to know each other in a relaxed atmosphere. Fun is an important part of the day, but when the competition starts, things get serious and the tension rises. Nobody has come to be eliminated in the first round. There are four grinding boxes ready, so four men at a time were fighting for a place in the next round.

Round 1: Grind the shaft from a steel bolt to the fixing nut without damaging it. The sharpener may choose the product with which he thinks he can win the race. To our amazement, the first four competitors all go for a grinding disc. In Germany, the fibre disc has not yet been adopted in the same way as in the Netherlands. But a clearer advertisement for the fibre disc could not be made:

Where the job was done with a deflashing disc in about 4 minutes, the winner who used a fibre disc was finished in 17 seconds. What a huge difference!

But also the difference between the 982C and 987C fiber disc was undeniable. Use the right drive for your specific application. We say it every day on the shop floor, but it's still nice to see it become reality in practice. You use the 3M 982C fiber on steel and the 3M 987C is for stainless steel. The fastest 10 went on to round 2. If you had chosen the right disc, you were actually already assured of a place in the next round.

Round 2: Make 10 equal cuts as fast as possible and as accurate as possible. On the tube that had to be sharpened were markings. On those points cuts of 9 grams had to be made. At the final position it was weighed how fast the job was done and each cut was weighed. The deviation from this counts in the final score.

Important in this round is the position of your protective cap. Make sure you keep an eye on your work!

For a longer life of your cut-off wheel, a pendulum motion is important and do not push too hard. Let the wheel do the work. But yes, during a match the life time of a disc doesn't count, so gas up and (okay, for us with a bit of luck) move on to round 3.

Round 3: in the third round there was again free choice in the discs. The assignment was to grind a weld flat and remove the mill scale without deforming the material. With the lessons from round 1, the remaining participants (four in total) chose the fibre disc. This is the quickest and flattest way of working. Everyone had their own technique, nice to see. But also with that the differences became very clear.

Important when using a fiber disc: keep the machine at the correct angle to the support pad. This will increase the contact surface which will increase the removal speed and improve the life of the disc.

If you grind with long strokes over the total weld, the machine will often automatically keep it a little flatter. You keep an eye on your work and a more constant reduction. In addition, you bring in less heat than you grind on a smaller surface. This round was won with head and shoulders. A bit painful for the German host country, but the finals colour ORANGE! Also Martijn Kok can show what he can do in the finals! The German team sportily swallowed this bitter pill and enthusiastically encouraged our compatriots.

Round 4: The final!

The last round was a challenging task with a number of steps and changes of abrasives. A railing had to be finished on an RA

Scotch Brite is generally used when the finish must be visually beautiful. It removes the grinding marks of the sanding grain from the previous steps. However, Scotch Brite is not a product to achieve a finish with an equal RA value.

Trizact is a unique product that always gives an equal finish! Important when grinding at a certain RA value.

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In this round the craftsmanship of Martijn Kok became clear, every day he is working on these kinds of adaptations. He brought the assignment to a successful conclusion in no time and thus became the rightful winner of this great event. Of course we congratulate Martijn Kok with this top achievement!

Metaaltechniekrepresented by Dirk van de Pol Kok, showed that we stand for what we propagate. Theory and practice supported each other in a great way.

Not only do we know how to convey the theory in our training centre or at the client's workplace, we also master the practice ourselves.

Pretty exciting to look for the stage, because as a grinding specialist we also have something to lose. We are proud of the end result, happy with what we were able to bring and thank 3M for this great sportive and fun day! The Dutch sales team of 3M also celebrated this result. The Netherlands can be proud of our great manufacturing industry!