Countdown to Chicago
The Largest Manufacturing Show in the Western Hemisphere
IMTS 2026 will be held September 14-19, 2026 at McCormick Place, Chicago. As the largest trade show in the Western Hemisphere, IMTS – The International Manufacturing Technology Show, draws the innovators, sellers, and drivers of manufacturing technology together to connect, be inspired, and find new solutions.
The Rundown
6 Days. Endless Connections. Your IMTS.
From exhibitors showcasing the latest solutions to cutting-edge conferences, there's something for everyone. Utilize your Show Planner for personalized recommendations to make your show experience exactly what you need.
BUILD YOUR AGENDA
Experiences Around the Show
Exhibitors
Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.
IMTS Emerging Technology Center
See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.
IMTS Main Stage
Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.
IMTS+ Hubs (East & South)
Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.
Sessions You Can't Miss
Aires Tide - A Sprint Towards Transformation with AI and Advanced Manufacturing
The current geopolitical environment necessitates an urgent shift in our approach to nuclear deterrence towards speed and agility. This talk will share some recent advancements towards these aims enabled by coupling AI with advanced manufacturing as part of the Aires Tide demonstrator for DOE’s Genesis Mission. We will share an overview of how we combined modeling and simulation, topology optimization, and generative design with advanced manufacturing to design, build, and test a flight test vehicle in just a few months and do so at a fraction of the cost of using traditional methods.
Kickstart your day with the IMTS Morning Show on the IMTS+ Main Stage! Hosted by the vibrant Marley Kayden, 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.
Automated, Multi-Job Metal Additive Manufacturing at Scale
The challenge with conventional metal additive manufacturing/ 3D printing is that it remains to be a rapid prototyping tool and less of a production asset. While the technology affords limitless design potential, it remains limited when it comes to process efficiency or productivity, particularly at large volumes. However, the ATLIX Team (formerly TRUMPF) introduces the next generation of metal additive manufacturing that eliminates production downtime and enables automated, multi-job manufacturing at scale. Eric Bert, President of ATLIX North America, presents on the latest generation of industrial additive manufacturing. Eric will share innovative technological advancements that allow for non-stop productivity on the largest system available (500x500x400mm). This presentation is targeted for machine shops and OEM’s with novice, beginner, or advanced 3D printing competency.
Smarter by Design: The Agentic Digital Thread
More manufacturers are using the digital thread to connect design, engineering, and production. Now AI agents help them turn this connected data into action and achieve new levels of productivity. In this fireside conversation, industry leaders discuss how Siemens industrial AI and Microsoft Azure OpenAI enable teams to reason across engineering, simulation, and the shop floor through natural language. Learn what’s delivering value today, where the technology is headed, and practical steps discrete manufacturers can take to build an agentic digital thread.
Explore Recommended Sessions Through Your Show Planner
Browse a List of Exhibitors Tailored to Your Interests
Experiences Around the Show
Exhibitors
Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.
IMTS Emerging Technology Center
See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.
IMTS Main Stage
Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.
IMTS+ Hubs (East & South)
Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.
Sessions You Can't Miss
Panel 3: Building Software for the Factory Floor
The hardest part of industrial software isn't the product it's getting it adopted by operators, maintenance leads, and plant managers. Five founders building category-defining companies share what's actually working in GTM, pricing, and pilot-to-production.
The Architect: Building the Future
Join the leaders featured in the IMTS+ Original Series The Architect as they discuss theideas, technologies, and partnerships shaping the future of manufacturing.
Panel 5: Robots Get Real. Real World Deployments Manufacturing Robots
Four companies actually putting robots to work in production automation, robotic sheet metal forming, and AI-powered welding. Less about what's possible in a lab, more about what's running in real factories today: the integration headaches, the customer economics, and what it takes to scale from one cell to one hundred.
The Automation Workforce Is Being Built Now: Is Your Shop Aligned?
Across the country, regional education programs are accelerating the adoption of automation in high schools. In one workforce reshaping initiative, tens of thousands of dollars were invested to deploy multiple functional automation cells not only at a university level, but across seven local high schools. The goal was not simply to teach robotics it was to prepare students for real-world process automation environments before they ever step onto a shop floor.
This session explores what happens when education modernizes faster than local industry. As students gain hands on experience with automation systems, manufacturers that are not aligned with current tools, workflows, and expectations risk losing incoming talent to more automation ready competitors.
Attendees will gain insight into how regional workforce initiatives are redefining entry level skill sets and what practical steps manufacturers can take to evaluate their own alignment with the next generation of skilled labor.
Explore Recommended Sessions Through Your Show Planner
Browse a List of Exhibitors Tailored to Your Interests
Experiences Around the Show
Exhibitors
Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.
IMTS Emerging Technology Center
See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.
IMTS Main Stage
Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.
IMTS+ Hubs (East & South)
Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.
Miles for Manufacturing 5K
Lace up and run to fund STEM education.
Sessions You Can't Miss
Description:
Modern manufacturing industries face increasing demands for precision, reliability, and efficiency—especially in sectors where material performance and structural integrity are critical. Traditional inspection methods, such as cutting or disassembling components, are often impractical for complex assemblies and advanced materials. This presentation will explore how 3D X-ray imaging technologies, such as computed tomography (CT), are revolutionizing industrial quality inspection by providing non-destructive insights into the internal structures of components, materials, and assemblies.
Enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning algorithms, these technologies enable advanced defect detection, 3D data reconstruction, and the creation of digital twins. This shift from reactive to predictive and adaptive quality assurance models is helping manufacturers improve product reliability, reduce waste, and optimize workflows across industries such as aerospace, automotive, electronics, medical devices, additive manufacturing, and new energy material solutions.
Key Topics Covered:
Computed Tomography (CT): Learn how CT captures high-resolution volumetric data to visualize internal structures without damaging the component.
AI and Deep Learning: Discover how advanced algorithms automate defect detection, improve accuracy, and enable detailed 3D data reconstruction.
Digital Twins: Understand how CT data can be used to create virtual models for design optimization and production management.
Real-World Applications: Explore case studies from industries such as aerospace, automotive, electronics, medical devices, additive manufacturing, and energy solutions, demonstrating how intelligent X-ray technologies solve critical manufacturing challenges.
This session will provide actionable insights into deploying intelligent 3D X-ray imaging technologies to address common manufacturing challenges, such as detecting hidden defects, validating designs, optimizing tooling, and ensuring structural integrity during production. Attendees will gain practical knowledge on integrating these systems into existing workflows and leveraging inspection data to drive process improvements, reduce costs, and enhance product reliability.
Key Takeaways:
Best practices for implementing intelligent X-ray systems across various industries.
Strategies for optimizing deep learning models for specific applications.
Insights into using preventative data from CT scans to support predictive quality inspection.
Examples of how these technologies improve product development, production, and quality assurance.
This presentation is ideal for professionals in aerospace, automotive, electronics, medical devices, additive manufacturing, and energy sectors.
Attendees will leave knowing how to apply AI-enhanced CT technology to:
Enhance defect detection: AI-driven automation increases accuracy by up to 50%, enabling early identification of voids, dimensional variations, and structural issues.
Optimize workflows: CT supports First Article Inspection during ramp-up, batch sampling in production, and digital twin creation for predictive quality assurance.
Solve industry-specific quality challenges: Real-world examples will showcase transformative impacts in aerospace, automotive, electronics, medical devices, additive manufacturing, and energy solutions.
Gain practical insights to enhance productivity, improve product performance, and maintain a competitive edge in the global manufacturing landscape.
Discover how smarter shops solve tough production challenges through automation, digital tools, and innovative thinking. Learn practical lessons from Michael Gimbel, Jim Belosic, and Al Whatmough.
Unattended by Design: Laser, Probing, and Data That Make Lights Out Real
If your automation plan stalls at the metrology step, this talk is for you. Machines have gotten faster. Automation has gotten smarter. But inspection is still slowing too many of us down. Modern in‑process metrology—laser, vision, probing, and form measurement—can unlock the productivity your machines already have inside them.
We’ll demonstrate how laser measurement systems's dense measurement stream boosts process reliability. How visualization software provides instant actionable data for operators and engineers. And how precision probing standardizes setups in minutes. Measuring and automation software can also hlep you run longer, with fewer stops, and higher confidence.
With in‑process measurement, you can detect wear and breakage before it becomes scrap, correct offsets automatically, validate geometry inside the machine, achieve true “first‑part‑right”, and ultimately run longer without an operator standing next to the machine. This isn’t a dream. It’s happening right now in factories that have digitized the measurement stage. "Lights out" production is truely possible.
The manufacturing workforce is adapting to rapid changes. An artificial intellegence competency framework helps illuminate career pathways and articulate employer needs even when the technology landscape is unstable.
Explore Recommended Sessions Through Your Show Planner
Browse a List of Exhibitors Tailored to Your Interests
Experiences Around the Show
Exhibitors
Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.
IMTS Emerging Technology Center
See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.
IMTS Main Stage
Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.
IMTS+ Hubs (East & South)
Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.
Sessions You Can't Miss
Add a Shift Without Hiring One: Automating Machine Tending for More Throughput
Manual machine tending does more than strain your workforce; it quietly caps throughput, reduces uptime, and ties growth to labor availability.
This session examines the actual operational costs of manual tending, including lost production hours, inconsistent cycle times, and the compounding effects of turnover and labor gaps. You’ll see how automated machine tending helps manufacturers increase throughput without adding headcount, unlock additional capacity, stabilize performance, and improve overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
We’ll introduce a zero-capital, fully supported automation model that removes traditional barriers and makes scalable growth accessible to manufacturers of any size. If labor constraints are limiting output, this session will show how to turn machine tending into a strategic advantage.
Embodied AI Improving Safety and Throughput in Hazardous Finishing Environments
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.
The Intelligent Shop: A New Framework for Scaling Operational Excellence
The greatest bottleneck in modern manufacturing is no longer machine capacity, it’s the fragility of tribal knowledge. While Lean focused on waste and Six Sigma on variance, the next frontier for the high-precision shop is the transition from a manual System of Record to a proactive System of Execution: one where best practices are captured, enforced, and improved automatically rather than living in the minds of your best people.This session introduces the Intelligent Shop - a framework that treats operational expertise as a living digital asset, not a human dependency. Instead of bolting on separate systems for quality, cybersecurity, scheduling, and compliance, the Intelligent Shop embeds them into a single production workflow where compliance needs like AS90100 and CMMC become a natural byproduct of how the shop already runs.
Attendees will learn how to operationalize their best practices into repeatable digital workflows, surface production realities in real-time, embed security and quality compliance directly into daily operations, and build an operation that can onboard a new machinist on Monday and pass an audit on Friday, all without breaking stride.
The shops thriving now aren’t the ones with the best heroes. They’re the ones that build systems that get smarter the longer they operate
Bridging the OT Reality Gap: What Your Plant Floor Knows About Cyber Risk That the C-Suite Doesn’t
AMDT research shows a persistent “reality gap” inside industrial organizations: executives are highly confident in their OT security and stability, while the teams closest to the equipment see frequent disruptions, human error, and growing cyber exposure. This session helps manufacturers close that gap by combining data from US plants with a practical playbook for unifying leadership, engineering, and OT around a single source of truth for configurations, changes, and incidents.
Explore Recommended Sessions Through Your Show Planner
Browse a List of Exhibitors Tailored to Your Interests
Experiences Around the Show
Exhibitors
Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.
IMTS Emerging Technology Center
See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.
IMTS Main Stage
Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.
IMTS+ Hubs (East & South)
Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.
Sessions You Can't Miss
Orchestrating the Machine Shop of the Future: Autonomous CNC tending
Traditional automation struggles with the variability of modern high-mix manufacturing. In this session, Intrinsic and Trinity Automation share practical insights from their journey of bringing physical AI to the shop floor. The discussion delves into real-world learnings from bridging cutting-edge foundation models with shop-floor realities to elevate operator productivity and orchestrate intelligently flexible machine shop production.
Built with Intrinsic Intelligence™, Trinity Automation’s AI system unlocks true high-mix, variable-volume production without the need for manual robot reprogramming. Attendees will discover how intuitive interfaces empower machine shop owners and operators to manage autonomous machine tending workflows, driving compelling customer ROI by improving machine utilization and delivering autonomous operator assistance.
Achieve the Impossible: Vertically Integrating the Next Era of Supersonic Flight & Industrial Power
Join Boom Supersonic’s Chief Scientist Nick Sheryka and Head of Manufacturing Nate Hepler for a dynamic 30-minute fireside chat moderated by AMT VP - Technology, Ryan Kelly. Discover how Boom is defying traditional aerospace timelines by bringing full-lifecycle manufacturing under one roof in Denver—vertically integrating advanced turbomachinery to power both Mach 1.7 commercial flight and next-generation energy infrastructure for AI data centers.
Making Chips: IMTS 2026 Debrief: The Tech That Mattered
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 Recommended Sessions Through Your Show Planner
Browse a List of Exhibitors Tailored to Your Interests
Experiences Around the Show
Exhibitors
Explore innovations in machining, additive, automation, digital solutions, quality and more.
IMTS Emerging Technology Center
See a live, end-to-end manufacturing system operating continuously on the show floor.
IMTS Main Stage
Your front-row seat to the people shaping the industry.
IMTS+ Hubs (East & South)
Have a particular manufacturing challenge? Have a seat and discover solutions.
Sessions You Can't Miss
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.
No Permission Needed: The Women Building the Next Era of Manufacturing
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.
Kickstart your day with the IMTS Morning Show on the IMTS+ Main Stage! Hosted by the vibrant Marley Kayden, 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.
Explore Recommended Sessions Through Your Show Planner
Browse a List of Exhibitors Tailored to Your Interests
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