Johannesburg Branch News
April 2005
SAIMC
Back in the early days of the SAIMC (around 1958) a group of young enthusiastic engineers got together and established The Instrument and Control Society of Southern Africa (ICSSA) the forerunner of the South African Institute of Measurement and Control. The inevitable happened, these young people became older, and unfortunately, there were not any younger leaders willing to take up the challenge of running this essential organisation.
I am pleased to say that this has now changed, the members of the controlling council and branch committees are mostly younger persons with new and exciting ideas. The excuse that the SAIMC is 'a bunch of old fogies' has become even lamer than it ever was. If this was ever true, why did the user of this excuse not do something about it by their support and participation?
We are currently working on a number of initiatives that will make the SAIMC an organisation that will be even more of a benefit to members - whether individual or patron. It will be an advantage to members of all categories to be associated with the SAIMC. (More of this later.)
The Johannesburg branch is once again off to a flying start in this New Year. January saw our well-attended AGM, where the 2005 committee was elected and the February meeting was sponsored by Siemens, who told us about flue gas analysis using across stack infrared detection principles. This subject encouraged many questions from the audience, and was appreciated by the members. We have entered the planning phase of the winter golf day and have made a booking for June
The committee also has a number of site visits planned and will be publishing these as soon as it has confirmed the venue appointments.
We are continuously on the look out for technical papers that qualify for the Negretti Award. This prestigious award recognises original endeavour in preparing and delivering an original technical paper on the topic of instrumentation used for measurement and/or control.
Remember, our meetings are on the second Wednesday of the month at the Rivonia Club. See you there.
Vivian MacFadyen, chairman
Further reading:
SAIMC: From the office of the COO
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SAIMC: Johannesburg branch
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Hendrik Spies of SICK Automation Southern Africa presented at the SAIMC Johannesburg Technology Evening on 12 August 2026, covering the digital journey from condition monitoring to predictive maintenance.
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SAIMC: Johannesburg branch: Distilled to perfection: Women’s Month gin experience
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The SAIMC Johannesburg branch celebrated Ladies Month with a gin tasting event.
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SAIMC: Durban branch
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The SAIMC Durban branch hosted S’yabonga Langa, systems performance engineer at eThekwini Electricity, who presented on applying substation automation to improve operational efficiency and service quality in modern power distribution networks.
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Following requests from our sponsors, the SAIMC INSPIRE conference has officially extended the abstract submission deadline to 28 August 2026.
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Recognising practical engineering talent is a missing link in the South Africa’s skills pipeline.
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SAIMC: Durban Technology Evening
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The SAIMC Durban branch hosted a Technology Evening on mobile machine automation.
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SAIMC: Eastern Cape branch
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The SAIMC Eastern Cape Branch co-hosted a satellite viewing site for ICRA 2026 at Nelson Mandela University, giving postgraduate students, academics and local industry professionals access to premier international robotics and automation keynote sessions.
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SAIMC: Johannesburg Technology Evening
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The SAIMC Johannesburg Branch July Technology Evening, hosted by WIKA Instruments, covered key level measurement technologies and featured live product demonstrations from area sales manager Anthony Terblanche.
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International robotics conference streams live to Africa
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The SAIMC hosted five live-stream viewing events across South Africa for the IEEE International Conference of Robotics and Automation in Vienna, bringing global robotics research and technology directly to local industry and academia.
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