BUILD YOUR AGENDA

Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.

See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.

Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.

Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.

As manufacturers rethink supply chains and domestic production, Haddy is demonstrating a new model built around robotic microfactories. Rather than shipping products around the world, digital manufacturing enables products to be produced closer to where they're needed. This session examines how additive manufacturing, robotics, and automation help to create a more resilient, responsive, and sustainable manufacturing ecosystem.

CNC programming, inspection, and manufacturability analysis are still fragmented, manual, and dependent on scarce expertise. CAM, CMM, and DFM workflows operate in silos, slowing production and limiting scalability.

In this session, David Priev, CEO of LimitlessCNC, introduces a new category: the AI Machinist.

Manufacturers across industries face a common challenge: critical machine tools outlast their controls, creating risks tied to obsolescence, safety compliance, and workforce skills gaps. Replacing entire lines is costly and disruptive, yet modernization can deliver better performance, faster, and with future-ready capabilities.

This session outlines a repeatable methodology for revitalizing essential assets through control upgrades, mechanical simplification, and operator-centric design principles. This session will explore how this approach improves maintainability, accelerates training, and integrates safety standards while preparing equipment for digital analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).

To illustrate, we’ll reference recent projects where legacy grinding and machining systems were transformed with state-of-the-art CNC platforms, servo technology, and risk-assessed safety enhancements, all delivered under tight timelines and budget constraints with minimal machine downtime. These examples demonstrate how modernization unlocks transparency, reliability, and data connectivity, without starting from scratch.

Attendees will gain practical insights on:

• Assessing modernization opportunities
• Managing risk and uptime during retrofit
• Designing for operator usability and future digital integration

This proven approach applies broadly from energy to aerospace, where high-value machine tools remain mission-critical.

The Accountability Problem

An AI-informed scheduling adjustment triggers a tool changeover that contributes to a quality escape. The defect reaches a customer. Who signs the CAPA—the algorithm, the operator who accepted the recommendation, or the plant manager who approved the system?

Until manufacturers can answer that question without hesitation, AI adoption on the factory floor will remain slowed by legitimate governance and compliance concerns.

Bounded AI: A Governance-First Design Approach

This session addresses the accountability challenge directly by introducing bounded AI—a design approach in which AI systems operate within explicitly defined authority, preserve full traceability, surface uncertainty, and support safe rollback. Rather than granting algorithms unchecked autonomy, bounded AI integrates decision support into existing operational workflows while maintaining clear lines of responsibility.

The discussion is grounded in real manufacturing environments: mixed-vintage equipment, established PLC logic, MES systems, regulated quality processes, and audit requirements. Through practical factory-floor scenarios, attendees will see how bounded AI integrates with existing governance structures such as change control, CAPA workflows, and audit trails—without disrupting throughput or safety.

What Attendees Will See

Specifically, the session demonstrates how to:

Define documented decision boundaries for AI recommendations
Surface system confidence levels to support informed operator judgment
Maintain continuous traceability of AI-influenced decisions
Implement structured rollback mechanisms to protect production stability
Extend existing change control processes to AI-driven adjustments

Operational Impact

When accountability is engineered intentionally, manufacturers reduce resistance to AI adoption, accelerate decision cycles, improve schedule responsiveness, and strengthen audit readiness. Plants can introduce AI-assisted scheduling, maintenance prioritization, and process optimization within 1–3 years—without controller replacement or forklift system upgrades.

Workforce Stability

Equally important, this session addresses workforce stability. AI systems that override human authority create distrust and compliance risk. AI systems that preserve operator judgment, document decision rationale, and clarify accountability elevate human roles instead of diminishing them. In bounded AI architectures, operators remain the accountable decision-makers—equipped with better information, not replaced by automation.

Key Takeaway

Attendees will leave with a practical governance framework for deploying AI in both regulated and non-regulated manufacturing environments—improving uptime, quality performance, and operational responsiveness without introducing accountability gaps or workforce disruption.

Educational Outcomes / Lessons Learned

Attendees will learn:

Why accountability ambiguity is a primary barrier to AI adoption in manufacturing
How to define and document AI decision boundaries
How to integrate explainability and traceability into existing quality systems
How rollback architecture reduces deployment risk
How bounded AI strengthens workforce trust and regulatory confidence

Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.

See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.

Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.

Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.

Optically complex parts, including transparent materials, highly reflective metals, rough textures, and multi-material components, pose significant challenges for conventional surface metrology. Reconstruction errors, unstable data, and reduced defect detectability can compromise inspection confidence and downstream decisions.

This session explores how these surface conditions impact texture and defect evaluation, focusing on data validity, repeatability, and reconstruction reliability rather than nominal values alone. Real measurement examples will illustrate common failure modes and provide practical insight into recognizing measurement artifacts, validating data quality, and improving metrology strategy for complex manufacturing surfaces, while also highlighting a novel method for direct 3D surface measurement.

Join us for the invite-only IMTS Investor Summit Reception in the Prairie Room at the Hyatt for networking with fellow investors, founders, and industry leaders.

For 30 years, CAD has belonged to a handful of incumbents. The founders building AI-native design and simulation tools make the case for what changes when generative models meet engineering workflows and where the legacy stack finally breaks.

Automated Non-Contact EMAT Thickness Measurement for Aerospace Metals in CNC Milling

Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.

See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.

Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.

Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.

Lace up and run to fund STEM education.

Modern machining techniques create a demanding environment in a challenging commercial environment.  Discover how mist collection systems can protect your operators, improve uptime and deliver consistent part quality.  Join us to look at the solutions and technologies that can assist you in delivering a world class part.

Every manufacturer sits on valuable data locked inside ERP and back office systems, out of reach of the frontline workers who need it most. This session tells the story of Riddell, a company that has designed football protective equipment for nearly a century, and how it put that data directly into its frontline sellers' hands. Facing a field sales team that spent too much of the day hunting for pricing, delivery dates, and order status across disconnected systems, Riddell chose not to add more support staff. Instead it built an AI assistant, called RIA, that connects to its SAP ERP and answers natural language questions inside Microsoft Teams, in the flow of a rep's day. Attendees will learn how Riddell scoped the solution around a day in the life study of its frontline roles, prepared and governed its ERP data for AI, and drove adoption through a phased rollout and disciplined change management. We will share the measurable results, including more than 21,000 hours returned to the team each year, and show why the same pattern of frontline enablement applies just as well to operators, maintenance, and field service across the plant and beyond.

Welcome to the new Industrial Frontier—where human ingenuity and machine intelligence scale together. Agentic AI drives an unprecedented convergence of automation, digitalization, and industrial software. The result: Systems that don’t just respond, but instead create advantage across the entire value chain. Discover how humans, machines, and agents are together shaping a new frontier of industry—unlocking unmatched performance, accelerated innovation, and new horizons of growth.

Manufacturing demand is surging, work is coming back onshore, and yet the skilled workforce continues to shrink. The pressure to do more with less has never been greater.

On-machine inspection gives manufacturers a way to meet that challenge head-on -- catching errors in-process, reducing scrap, and eliminating the costly guesswork of offline inspection. The tools to make this possible may already be sitting under your roof.

This session is for manufacturing leaders looking to get more out of the hardware they already own -- particularly those operating in aerospace, military, and large-precision-workpiece environments where tolerances are tight and the cost of a mistake is high.

Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.

See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.

Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.

Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.

Our talk will focus on flexible automation in the CNC space and some of the hurdles encountered. Will explore examples and methods to overcome the challenges. The focus of the talk is on how to best utilize flexible manufacturing and what to look for with the goal of unlocking productivity to achieve the desired ROI.

What should this part cost today? Which of last month's supplier price increases were actually justified? And where would re-sourcing beat renegotiating?
Most procurement teams can answer these questions for their top parts, once a year, in a spreadsheet. Across 400+ industrial manufacturers, we see what changes when they can answer for every part, every day: savings potential worth 10%+ of material cost becomes visible, and capturable. In a market where tariff rules change mid-quarter, freight swings double digits, and reshoring forces supplier requalifications, that speed is moving margin and market share from slow manufacturers to fast ones.
This 30-minute session shows how the fast ones do it. Real screens, real parts, real numbers. Here's how it plays out:

AI finds every part's fair cost. Cost models built from material, process, freight, and duties show what each part should cost today. The gap to the price you pay is your savings potential, mapped across 100,000+ parts, not just the A-parts.
Every negotiation runs on it. Some increases are justified; many aren't. The analysis becomes arguments, counterpoints, and target prices. You walk in prepared and run it on your terms.
AI points sourcing where the money is. Sometimes the bigger lever is a new supplier. You see which parts are worth re-quoting and the price to beat.

For procurement, purchasing, supply chain, and plant leaders, anyone who owns a margin number. Then see your own potential: Tacto, Booth 135711 - live demo plus a free savings snapshot from your own order data. Ten concrete opportunities, no IT project required.

The standoff between the people quoting the work and the people cutting it, and how to finally bridge it.

Surface preparation, finishing, and cleaning operations face mounting pressure from labor shortages, rising costs, and heightened safety risks in hazardous environments. This session explores how embodied AI and safety-certified, explosion-proof robotics enable adaptive process innovation in finishing applications where variability and compliance constraints limit traditional automation. Attendees will learn how closed-loop, AI-driven automation software enhances safety, reduces rework and downtime, shortens changeovers, and stabilizes high-mix operations. The discussion highlights practical approaches to protecting workers, maintaining compliance, and transforming finishing processes into scalable, resilient, margin-protecting manufacturing capabilities.

Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.

See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.

Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.

Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.

The Civil Reserve Manufacturing Network (CRMN) is a new initiative at the Department of War to broaden domestic manufacturing capability and capacity in the defense industrial base during wartime by providing companies incentives and other considerations during peacetime, as inspired by the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF).  This session will provide information on the DoW CRMN Implementation Plan, and more importantly, solicit feedback and ideas from the manufacturing community on what types of incentives would be attractive for such a program and what barriers exist for a company interested in participating.  The presentation will be followed by “office hours” where DoW representatives will be available to answer questions not covered during the session.

Kickstart your day with the IMTS Morning Show on the IMTS+ Main Stage! Each episode features lively interviews with industry experts, main-stage keynote speakers, manufacturers, and social media influencers. Get the scoop on must-see events and key insights to make the most of your day at IMTS.

When the machine checks out fine but the scrap bin keeps filling up: the real culprits behind blown parts.

Five days, miles of show floor. By Friday, one question remains: of everything at IMTS 2026, what actually matters for your shop? The MakingChips hosts and guests break down the tech that mattered, debate what's next, and place their bets. We'll also announce who won the DN Solutions + Kennametal Machine Giveaway at the end.

Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.

See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.

Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.

Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.

Women aren’t waiting for an invitation to shape the future of manufacturing. This candid conversation brings together women from across the industry to talk about getting in, staying in, and stepping up — from the shop floor to leadership — and what needs to change to build the next generation of manufacturing.

Discover the ideas and innovations transforming manufacturing. This Main Stage session will feature industry experts sharing insights on emerging technologies, workforce trends, and the future of the industry.

Discover the ideas and innovations transforming manufacturing. This Main Stage session will feature industry experts sharing insights on emerging technologies, workforce trends, and the future of the industry.

Kickstart your day with the IMTS Morning Show on the IMTS+ Main Stage! Each episode features lively interviews with industry experts, main-stage keynote speakers, manufacturers, and social media influencers. Get the scoop on must-see events and key insights to make the most of your day at IMTS.