"Our power electronics customers get-together" - The International Conference on Efficient Welding in Industrial Applications '99 and The 7th Nordic Conference in Laser Processing of Materials, Lappeenranta, Finland

This associatc editor did not take the wrong train nor was he desperately hunting for his looking glasses when hc decided to attend a set of two recent conferences dealing with welding technologies. Well I must admit that it was fairly easy to go to scssions within my own campus area but actually I havc sometimes omittcd even meetings in the next room when having the fecling therc is nothing for me. Instead, the main rcason to go to thcse particular two happenings was two-fold. To start with, I think that elcctric (or nowadays, electronic) welding supplies and high power lasers are good examples of dcvices dcsigncd by engineers to be utilized by other engineers, in this case, howcvcr, from differcnt faculties. Knowing the application-relatcd problems might clcarly bring us some new ideas for thc power electronics concepts in these systems. Just as a case cxample picked from the meetings, if the welding scientist tells us that he has severe problems when using a twisted pair scrial cable for controlling a robot station, it is likely one of us should go therc and introduce the optical fiber. Or, assuming the welding people would like to use a pre-heating current for