Learn how to leverage SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional’s built-in functions to help automate mundane data management tasks. This seminar will walk you through PDM Professional’s built-in tools such as Dispatch Actions, Templates, and Workflow automation. See how MLC’s proprietary EQUIVAQ tools for PDM can extend automation for additional tasks.

This seminar covers the following:

• Learn how Dispatch Actions can automate renaming/moving files, auto-checkin files, bulk editing of custom properties, and variable updates.
• Utilize PDM Templates for Folder and File creation with meta data.
• Leverage Workflows to automatically write variables to data cards, initiate tasks, and trigger Dispatch actions.
• Introduce EQUIVAQ Tools to increase automation for renaming with serial numbers, transitioning delayed files, reporting, and much more.

Join us for a session covering SOLIDWORKS and the 3DExperience Platform. Learn how SOLIDWORKS files can be stored and managed in 3DExperience for a true cloud-based environment that manages SOLIDWORKS file references.

This seminar covers the following:

· Learn about the 3DExperience User Interface

· Discuss the 3DExperience object-oriented architecture.

· Provide tips and tricks to work in the 3DExperience Platform

· Discover SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services functionality including Share and Markup.

· See examples of managing SOLIDWORKS files in 3DExperience

Engineering simulation plays a critical role in modern product development by enabling teams to evaluate performance, improve reliability, and gain insight into designs before physical prototypes are built. 

In this session, we’ll explore Ansys Mechanical, an industry‑leading Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tool used across a variety of industries to evaluate designs before physical testing, under multiple load cases and environments.  We will also discuss and demo practical techniques engineers can use to get the most out of their structural simulations—helping improve model quality, streamline setup time, and increase confidence in simulation results. 

Key Topics 

Defeaturing (Simplifying Geometry for Simulation) 

• We will discuss and explain when and why we defeature geometries, as they are a key first step in conducting an FEA analysis. 
• Demonstration of defeaturing using Ansys Discovery and built‑in Mechanical tools 

Meshing Methods (Building an Effective Mesh for Accurate Results) 

• Overview of mesh methodologies and best practices 
• How much effort should go into mesh generation? 
• Tips for creating swept meshes effectively 
• Introduction to multizone meshing techniques 

Contacts (Defining Part Interactions) 

• Overview of contact types and their proper use cases 
• When and where to apply different contact definitions for accurate simulations 

Who Should Attend? 

This session is ideal for mechanical engineers, design engineers, and product developers looking to learn more about using Ansys Mechanical and overall improve simulation efficiency and accuracy within their structural simulations. 

FANUC America is the world leader in advanced automation.  Partnered with ASI partner ACSYS Automation, FANUC aims to demonstrate ease of use robotics paired with advanced AI, streaming motion and VR.

This presentation will highlight the latest advancements in FANUC’s integrated vision technology, including a newly designed 5-megapixel camera that provides four times the resolution of the previous generation. The increased resolution significantly expands the robot’s effective field of view and enhances part detection capabilities.

The new camera utilizes unified GigE Ethernet communication, enabling simple integration with the R-50iA controller and broader Ethernet networks. The redesigned waterproof camera features integrated LED illumination and requires only a single Ethernet cable for both communication and operation.

We will also demonstrate FANUC’s common vision user interface, which provides a consistent experience across the iPendant, Tablet TP, and PC platforms, simplifying system setup and operation.

Attendees will learn:

• How to set up and configure the new GigE vision camera
• The advantages of high-resolution vision and its impact on application performance
• Best practices for vision setup, calibration, and optimization
• Key features of the new lightweight teach pendant and its reduced footprint – we will have this Teach Pendant at the event.

The session will include a live demonstration showcasing the vision system in operation, and attendees may have an opportunity for hands-on interaction with the technology.

In addition, supporting marketing materials will be available for attendees who would like to learn more after the presentation.

Learn practical techniques for configuring, aligning, and programming precision multi-axis gantry systems. This hands-on session covers the end-to-end engineering workflow — from component selection to programming multi-axis coordinated motion.

Attendees will learn:

• Drive Technology & Mechanics Selection: Evaluate critical physics trade-offs between leadscrews, ballscrews, and direct-drive linear motors, as well as stepper vs. servo motor torque dynamics at speed.
• Sizing & Specification Criteria: Avoid common multi-axis design pitfalls, including cantilevered moment loads (M_x, M_y, M_z), critical speed limits, thermal limits, and structural flatness/orthogonality.
• Web CAD Configurator & Instant Quotes: Use online gantry configurators to customize X-Y-Z setups, export 3D CAD files, and generate instant lead times and pricing.
• Assembly & Mechanical Alignment: Learn best practices for mounting to precision surfaces, aligning dual-parallel X-axes using dial indicators to eliminate racking, and setting up strain-relieved cable tracks.
• Zero-Code Setup & Hardware Verification: Master the workflow to commission systems leveraging built-in features and GUIs including: auto-detect hardware, synchronize dual parallel motors, and manually jog axes before writing any code.
• Live Python Programming: Control multi-axis motion asynchronously and execute coordinated movement scripts.

Whether you’re designing custom multi-axis positioning equipment or integrating off-the-shelf precision stages, this session provides practical engineering insights and live demonstrations you can directly apply to your projects.

TriMech will walk through the process of taking an idea through product development from initial concept all the way to manufacturing.  A high-level demonstration of some of the tools used during product development will be provided as attendees follow along interactively to bring an idea to life.

Discover how AI-powered machine vision is transforming modern manufacturing quality inspection and process automation. In this interactive training session, attendees will explore how advanced 3D vision and AI-driven inspection technologies can help identify anomalies, detect defects, improve traceability, and reduce costly production errors across a wide range of industrial applications.
Through real-world examples and live demonstrations, attendees will gain insight into how manufacturers are leveraging intelligent vision systems to improve accuracy, consistency, and operational efficiency — even in challenging inspection environments where traditional vision methods may fall short.
Whether you are evaluating AI vision for quality control, robotic guidance, inspection, or process optimization, this session will provide practical knowledge and actionable ideas you can apply to your own operations.

Join R. Dean Odell—a seasoned expert in geometric dimensioning and tolerancing—for an in-depth, hands-on training session at PDX 2026. In this interactive workshop, you’ll learn advanced GD&T principles and real-world applications that bridge design theory and manufacturing practice. Dean will guide you through best practices, share insider tips on applying GD&T to solve complex engineering challenges, and provide practical examples that you can immediately implement on the job. Whether you’re looking to refine your precision skills or enhance your problem-solving toolkit, this session offers the practical, high-impact learning that modern product development engineers need to accelerate their careers.

What’s the best way to improve your 3D CAD skills?

Join us for a high-impact, 45-minute session where we’ll reveal how beginner, intermediate, and even advanced users can leverage the TooTallToby practice methodology and the CADpractice.com platform to sharpen their CAD skills and see improved modeling speed and modeling accuracy.

You’ll learn:

• How gamified skill tracking keeps you and your team engaged and developing
• How just 10 minutes a day yields measurable improvement
• Top Secret shortcuts, workflows, and time saving techniques
• Why top designers use timed models to prep for real-world challenges & certifications

We’ll walk through live examples, demonstrate our automated benchmarking tools, and give you access to pro-level practice sets. Don’t just practice—practice with purpose. Your next CAD breakthrough starts here.

Learn more: www.CADpractice.com | www.TooTallToby.com/practice

Every year, SOLIDWORKS introduces powerful new features designed to help users work faster and build better products. In this 45-minute session, Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert TooTallToby will highlight some of his favorite time-saving tools and enhancements found across the software.

Learn the basics in this “crash course” designed for anyone looking to understand the basics of Motion Control, Machine Vision, and Robotic technologies and how to apply to real-world applications and industries. 

Most hardware projects burn time and money by over-engineering the wrong things too early. In these four immersive sessions, the informal team will walk you through their concept-to-delivery playbook: how to do just the right amount of engineering to lock in industrial design, BoM, and realistic timelines. They’ll break down which engineering decisions should be made early for a Kickstarter launch — because those choices shape what you can promise backers — and what can safely wait. They’ll also provide real-world examples of what makes a crowdfunding campaign and the move to direct-to-consumer (DTC) successful. Through live demos across the tools informal uses most consistently for client projects, you’ll see the full path from first model to shipped goods, and leave with practical decisions you can apply to your own project immediately.

In this session you’ll learn:

• Master modeling in Onshape — building a master model and handling PCBA and off-the-shelf (OTS) parts, with Sam Holland, Product Design Engineer
• Rendering in Blender — design-review and campaign-ready visual workflows, with Andre Anderson, Designer
• PCBA design in KiCAD — board design and how electrical work integrates with the ME and ID teams, with Jim Griszbacher, Electrical Engineering Lead
• Launching your product in the wild—how and when to leverage crowdfunding for marketing purposes (even when you have the funding), and the DTC tools and strategies to build loyal customers with Nate Padgett, Community & Crowdfunding expert

Whether you’re refining a design, preparing to launch, or planning life after a crowdfunding campaign, you’ll walk away with a clear, practical framework for getting from idea to delivered product.

AI is moving fast, and it’s hard to know which parts of your workflow you can trust it with and which you can’t. In this session, we’ll look at engineering documentation and walk through each step of the workflow: what you can and should hand to AI, and what you still need to own. By the end, you’ll know how to adapt your documentation workflow to 10x your output while still fully trusting what comes out.

Flodraulic and Maytec will provide a step by step process of creating a framing solution, from software design to hands on assembly, and who how to integrate our cobot solutions.

Learn how to review and redline engineering drawings for common GD&T issues using real-world examples and F4, a state-of-the-art engineering drawing analysis platform. This interactive session will walk through what experienced engineers look for when reviewing prints, including datum schemes, feature control frames, ambiguous requirements, tolerance issues, and other common mistakes that can lead to manufacturing problems. Attendees will review drawings alongside F4 and see how modern technology can help engineers catch issues and better understand GD&T before drawings reach production.

See how easy it can be to automate a real machine using motors, pneumatic actuators, sensors, and other industrial devices—without writing code or becoming a controls expert.

Pipeline will demonstrate EZ Motion on a custom integrated system representative of equipment you might find on a factory floor. During the session, attendees will learn how to use EZ Motion’s visual, drag-and-drop software to create an automated motion sequence, coordinate different machine actions, respond to sensor inputs, and quickly adjust process parameters.

The same approach can be used to retrofit and automate existing equipment or serve as the control system for a completely new machine.

After the guided training, attendees will get hands-on access to the demo machine and modify its program themselves. You’ll leave with practical working knowledge of how to create and edit sophisticated automation quickly—no PLC, controls, or software programming experience required. 

Radiant Product Development is an industrial design and mechanical engineering consultancy based in Tempe, Arizona, specializing in hardware built for challenging environments. The team partners with companies in public safety, corrections, fleet and vehicle-mounted technology, life sciences, and industrial field service to develop rugged, reliable products that perform where failure isn’t an option.
Radiant operates on a “Convergent Design” philosophy, an approach built around three phases: Identify, Challenge, and Optimize. This process helps clients move from ambiguous problems to manufacturable, field-ready solutions faster and with fewer costly surprises. The firm’s senior-bench team brings decades of combined experience across industrial design, mechanical engineering, and materials selection for harsh-use applications.

Follow the path of a medical device from early concept to commercial launch. Remedy Medical Manufacturing will walk through the complete Lab to Market process, highlighting the critical steps, decisions, and challenges that can determine whether a device successfully reaches patients. The session will cover concept development, regulatory approval, manufacturing scale-up, and commercialization, giving attendees a practical look at how each stage connects and what it takes to move a medical device toward market successfully.

This session introduces the fundamental DFM practices engineers should incorporate throughout the PCB design process. From creating a production-ready BOM to designing the board, panel, component placement, routing, and assembly documentation, participants will learn how design decisions affect manufacturability. The training emphasizes early collaboration with EMS and PCB fabrication partners, DFM reviews, and clearly documenting special component and process requirements to prevent manufacturing issues.

In this hands-on session, you’ll walk through real-world vision applications and learn how to approach each challenge, configure the appropriate tools, and interpret the results. Demonstrations will include:

• Label inspection & OCR: Read printed text and identify defects such as smudges or poor print quality.
• Assembly verification: Use classification tools to quickly train a vision system to recognize different parts and features within an assembly.
• Foreign object detection: Learn how segmentation tools can identify unexpected objects or materials that should not be present.
• Building a complete inspection workflow: See how these tools can be combined within the OneVision platform to create a more complete machine vision solution.

The session is designed to give engineers a practical look at how vision applications are set up, trained, and applied to real manufacturing challenges

Learn the workflow for creating your own injection mold tooling and developing a molding process using the Maverick 9T benchtop injection molding machine. Attendees will see how the process comes together from tooling creation through molding, providing a practical look at producing injection-molded parts on a compact benchtop system.

This hands-on session teaches attendees how to dimensionally verify micro-DLP printed parts, where critical features often live in the sub-100 micron world—too small for calipers to resolve. Using a digital microscope and pre-printed sample parts, participants will learn why traditional metrology falls short at this scale, how to properly calibrate an optical system against a traceable standard, and how to measure critical features like channel widths, wall thickness, and feature heights with confidence. The emphasis throughout is on repeatability: understanding your own measurement variance before passing judgment on a part.

Learn step by step how to set up a Universal Robot with Sick’s 3d random bin picking system. Bin picking often requires the manufacturer to be involved for a variety of reasons whether it’s because the system is complex and difficult to set up, or maybe the manufacturer requires the images to be run through their deep learning algorithms to set the system up which can be time consuming, costly, and insecure when someone else is handling you or your customer’s data. Instead, why not learn how to do it on your own so you have total control? While we will be setting the system up with a UR robot the Sick PLB system is robot agnostic, and Sick offers many different brands quick start guides as well as programming templates and examples.

Compact thermal cameras can add detection, measurement, navigation, inspection, and machine-vision capabilities to a product, but successful integration requires more than selecting detector resolution. This practical session walks engineers through the decisions that control real system performance, including pixel pitch, lens selection, field of view, sensitivity, radiometry, video interfaces, processing latency, calibration, mechanical integration, and edge-AI deployment.

Participants will examine a compact LWIR core and interface architecture, calculate the field of view for a representative application, and identify common integration risks before they become expensive redesigns. Attendees may bring a sanitized imaging or embedded-system challenge for discussion. Each participant will receive a thermal-integration checklist and application worksheet suitable for use with their engineering team.

After the session, attendees should be able to:

● Translate application requirements into detector, lens, and interface requirements
● Distinguish image quality specifications from actual detection performance.
● Recognize thermal, electrical, mechanical, calibration, and software integration risks.
● Decide when edge AI adds useful capability and when it adds unnecessary complexity.
● Prepare a practical requirements package for a thermal-camera development project.

Recruiters see the job search from a very different angle than candidates do. We talk with hiring managers, review countless profiles and resumes, reach out to people who aren’t actively looking, and see firsthand why some candidates get traction while others with strong backgrounds get overlooked.

In this interactive session, we’ll pull back the curtain on how recruiters actually find, evaluate, and engage candidates. You’ll learn what gets a recruiter’s attention, how to build productive relationships before you desperately need a new job, and how to make it easier for recruiters to understand where you fit and advocate for you.

Whether you are actively searching, quietly exploring, or simply preparing for your next career move, you’ll leave with practical strategies to become more visible, communicate your value, and work more effectively with recruiters.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how recruiters search for and evaluate potential candidates
• Learn what makes a profile, resume, or conversation stand out
• Discover how to build recruiter relationships before you need them
• Understand what recruiters need from you in order to effectively represent you
• Avoid common mistakes that make candidates harder to place
• Position yourself for opportunities that may never appear on a public job board

Hiring great people is hard enough without accidentally making the process harder. Recruiters sit at the intersection of candidates, hiring managers, compensation expectations, company reputation, and a constantly changing talent market. That perspective reveals patterns that organizations often don’t see from inside their own hiring process.

In this interactive session, we’ll pull back the curtain on how recruiters search for talent, what strong candidates are looking for, and what helps or hurts a company’s ability to attract the people it really wants. We’ll also explore how to work effectively with recruiters, where hiring processes commonly break down, and how hiring managers can become better partners in the search.

You’ll leave with practical strategies to clarify what you actually need, make your opportunities more compelling, improve the candidate experience, and get more value from internal or external recruiting partners.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how recruiters identify, evaluate, and engage potential talent
• Learn what strong candidates notice about your company and opportunity
• Identify common hiring practices that cause organizations to lose good candidates
• Clarify what recruiters need from hiring managers to run an effective search
• Learn how to build a stronger partnership with internal and external recruiters
• Improve your ability to attract, engage, and close the right people

Ever set up a 2d camera for robot guidance? While many cameras have the ability to do robot guidance, most were not made with robot guidance as the primary focus. This often makes setting up robot guidance more complicated than it has to be, and can leave some functionality to be desired. Come learn how to set up a Sick 2d robot guidance camera with a UR robot and some of the unique features that make this a very useful powerful way to do robot guidance on almost any brand of robot. Guaranteed to save you time and money.

What AI Catches in Your Design, and What It Still Misses

Instant quoting and automated DFM are changing how quickly engineers get from a CAD file to a manufacturable part. But faster feedback only helps if you know what the algorithm is actually checking, and where it still needs you. This session breaks down how AI-powered DFM works in practice: the geometry and tolerance issues it flags in seconds, the design intent it cannot infer on its own, and the points where an engineer’s judgment still decides the outcome. Using real examples across CNC machining, sheet metal, 3D printing, and injection molding, you’ll see how design teams use automated manufacturability feedback to move faster without treating the tool as a black box.

Tariffs have shifted repeatedly through 2026, and for teams sourcing custom parts the cost impact is real and easy to miss until it reaches an invoice. This session looks at it from the engineer’s seat: why country of origin, not supplier location, sets the rate, how material choices like steel, aluminum, and copper carry different exposure, and how designing for multi-region manufacturability keeps your options open when rates move. It also covers what to look for in a manufacturing partner, from a network that can produce across regions to US-based operations, so your sourcing stays resilient wherever the trade picture goes next. You’ll leave able to see where design and material choices quietly shape landed cost, and how to build the flexibility to protect it.

Hemodialysis machines present a fascinating systems-design challenge: a complex capital system must repeatedly interface with low-cost, sterile disposable components while precisely controlling blood, fluids, pressures, temperatures, and treatment parameters. In this follow-up to “Designing an Artificial Heart,” Ian Coll McEachern uses the architecture of a hemodialysis machine to explore how engineers partition functionality between reusable equipment and disposable systems. Attendees will examine strategies for designing reliable mechanical and fluidic interfaces, reducing disposable cost and complexity, managing sensors and actuators across the interface, designing for manufacturability, and using simulation, prototyping, and testing to reduce system-level risk. The lessons apply well beyond medical devices to any product combining durable equipment with consumables, cartridges, tooling, or replaceable components.

As circuit boards get smaller, denser, and more expensive to fixture the old way, in-house test is falling out of reach for exactly the manufacturers who need it most. This hands-on technical training shows engineers how to build a working bed-of-nails ICT fixture and low-cost functional test capability from scratch — covering design-for-test fundamentals, probe and fixture selection, panel-level testing, low-cost DAQ and sequencer software, and a real BOM that puts an in-house fixture within reach of a small manufacturing budget. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for choosing between buy-vs-build on test infrastructure, avoiding the most common fixture pitfalls, and scaling from a single test cell to full production — without the six-figure price tag of a turnkey ATE system.

Small design details can have a significant effect on cost, appearance, quality, and strength. This interactive session takes a practical, process-by-process look at Design for Manufacturing and Assembly for injection molding, sheet metal fabrication, machining, additive manufacturing, and assembly.

Using screen examples and physical parts, we will examine considerations such as wall thickness, draft angles, bend radii, internal radii, workholding, tolerances, feature thickness, supports, hardware selection, tool clearance, accessibility, and fixtures. Engineers will see how these considerations apply across different manufacturing processes and how evaluating them can help minimize design and production pitfalls, saving you and your customers time and money.

Automation can be a valuable part of a solution, but automating a process does not guarantee a better outcome. Without a clearly defined problem and measurable goal, automation can introduce new challenges instead of solving the original one.

This session will present a practical framework for evaluating when and how automation should be used. We will discuss defining the problem, challenging the existing process, establishing a measurable target, and finding the simplest possible solution. We will also explore the importance of designing for real-world conditions rather than a perfect cycle and measuring the results to determine whether the solution achieved its goal. Engineers will leave with a more thoughtful approach to automation that begins with the problem, not the technology.

Executing FAT and SAT without clear requirements or test plans leads to redundant testing, moving goal posts, and bloated on-site validation burdens. End users pay in time, materials, and bandwidth.

GAMP 5 allows leveraging supplier testing to streamline validation, so long as key standards are met.

In this hands-on session, we’ll use latte making to demonstrate smart commissioning strategies that ease downstream CQV burdens. Walk away with practical tools and a latte.

Your design reviews, work instructions, and SOPs hold years of engineering knowledge. Most of it is text and images, but how that information is structured determines whether AI can make sense of it. In this session, we’ll walk through real engineering documents and break them down piece by piece. We’ll look at how to organize information, label it consistently, and tie it back to sources like CAD, PLM, and the BOM. You’ll leave with practical ways to structure your docs so AI can parse them reliably.