The first day of Gear Expo has been a resounding success. We've heard from a number of exhibitors who all report that business is good, foot traffic has been steady, and overall, the show seems strong compared with previous years. Our observations are that the exhibitors have come in full force with plenty of technology, and they represent a wide range of technologies from beginning to end in the life of a gear, including all of the major machine tool manufacturers, tooling suppliers and ancillary equipment and services -- not to mention dozens of gear and gearbox manufacturers with their wares on display. As for the Gear Technology team, we've had a successful first day as well. In our booth, we've already had two very informational sessions of "Ask the Expert Live!". The morning session, which focused on cylindrical gear cutting, was extremely well attended, with visitors watching from the aisles throughout the hour-long presentation. Thanks to all of our participants on the Ask the Expert Panel, including Tom Ware, product manager for gear tools at Star SU, Dr. Oliver Winkel, head of applications engineering for Liebherr, Dr. Hermann Stadtfeld, VP of Bevel Gear Technology and R&D at the Gleason works, and Dr. Hartmuth Mueller, Chief Technical Officer of Klingelnberg. The afternoon session of "Ask the Expert Live!" focused on Gear Design, and we were pleased to have on the panel Dr. Karsten Stahl, head of the gear research center at FZG, Frank Uherek, principal engineer for gear design and software development at Rexnord (and Gear Technology technical editor), and Chuck Schultz, principal engineer at Beyta Gear Systems (as well as our resident blogger and Gear Technology technical editor). Thank you to all of our experts for helping make the first day of Gear Expo such a great success. Our audience at the show certainly appreciated your technical expertise and experience. Fortunately, we've video recorded these presentations, and we will be sharing them with you in the near future. In addition, we recorded live interviews with:

• Scott Knoy, VP of German Machine Tools of America, on the topic of Scudding.
• Patrick Potter, Director of Sales for Cincinnati Gearing Systems (Questions to Ask your Gear Manufacturer)
• Hans Grass & Roberto Bagni of Star SU on the topic of Dry Grinding
• Mike Fish of Dontyne Systems and Mike Finn of Mazak on Closed Loop Gear Manufacturing
• Stephen Kendrish of American Stress Technologies on Barkhausen Noise analysis
• Hermann Stadfeld of Gleason on the machine tool industry in 2017 and beyond
• Chad Wesner, gear grinding technical expert from 3m on the latest grinding tools
• Harald Gehlen of Reishauer on the latest developments in generating grinding
• Mark Michaud of REM Surface Engineering discussing the latest finishing technologies

Stay tuned for future updates, because we're working on getting these interviews on the site as soon as possible.