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Perhaps the greatest beneﬁ t to EDM Today was the opportunity to meet and greet many of our existing subscribers.
We met several subscribers who told us they have been subscribers for more than 20 years. It is very rewarding to
know that the work of our many Feature Editors has been appreciated by the EDM community.

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Photos courtesy of IMTS

The ﬁ nal registration statistics show that IMTS 2024 had 89,020 visitors. Statistics also show that IMTS set a record
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in terms of equipment brought into the show. A total of 1,737 exhibitors brought in more than 40 million pounds of
machinery. Visitors had access to 1,226,523 square feet of exhibition space divided between four buildings. While
early attendance expectations were slightly higher, IMTS 2024 exceeded the 2022 registration totals by 2,713
registrants. Hopefully, we are moving in the right direction, and IMTS 2026 will exceed the 2024 registration totals.
A common theme at IMTS was various ways to address the acute shortage of employees entering the metalworking
industry. EDM Today met with executives from the VDW, the organizers of EMO, which is coming up in 2025. They
shared that the lack of employees is as severe in the EU as in the USA. Most EDM Today subscribers who stopped
at the booth echoed the same thing; they are busy, particularly in the aerospace industry, but need to ﬁ nd ways to
increase productivity – to allow their decreasing workforce to produce more.
When visiting the many EDM-related booths, it was nice to see the many vendors supporting the industry rising to the
challenge. Many are shipping machines that include various levels of automation or are automation-ready. Automa-
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tion is also becoming prevalent in CAD/CAM software, which makes part programming easier and faster. Perhaps
the most signiﬁ cant change in the past few years has been in the ever-expanding offerings of the tooling companies.
Shops can now set up rail-driven robots to move parts and tooling between various machines and work cells – includ-
ing CMM inspection. This allows for extremely high levels of fully autonomous lights-out manufacturing. There are
also autonomous robots that navigate around a shop unguided by rails.
IMTS Rafﬂ e Winner
One of the primary reasons EDM Today was at IMTS was to provide cov-
erage of the many EDM-related exhibitors. While we did visit with many
Congratulations to Mr. Chuck Porter,
subscribers, most of our subscribers could not attend the show. There-
fore, this feature will allow them to experience the show and the many
card rafﬂ e for new and updated
EDM-related booths through our eyes. Each booth visit is written in the
subscriptions. Chuck is a Tool & Die
ﬁ rst person point of view and shares our impressions and experiences. the winner of the EDM Today gift
Mold Maker at STRATTEC Security
Corporation in Wisconsin.
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We hope you enjoy the visit to IMTS – let’s go!
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