Assembly Methods and DFM

Seminar Overview

The assembly process is where a product's design decisions are finally audited — and most products fail that audit, paying the price in line-side rework, fastener variety, torque audits, and field service calls that trace directly to choices made on the CAD screen. This seminar is built from the deepest assembly and manufacturing corpus in the ETS knowledge base: the full **Assembly Magazine article archive plus the Machine Design article archive** — roughly 82,000 indexed passages of practitioner-level material on assembly planning, joining technologies, automation, feeding and orientation, and design-for-assembly economics. It is supplemented by the design-guides corpus (Parker O-Ring Handbook, Loctite Design Guide for Bonding Plastics, resin-producer part and mold design guides) wherever a joining technology meets a plastic part.

Day one covers the product-assembly front end: assembly planning and sequence development, joining method selection across the full menu — mechanical fastening (screws, snaps, rivets, press-fits), adhesive bonding, welding (ultrasonic, vibration, laser, hot-plate), and soldering — with the decision framework that matches joint requirements to process capability. Day two covers the factory side: automated assembly, part feeding and orientation, tolerance for assembly and datum strategy, DFM economics (cost drivers, part-count reduction, and the arithmetic that justifies redesign), and design for service and disassembly — closing with a participant-supplied assembly teardown workshop.

The differentiator: this seminar is taught from PRIMARY SOURCE material — the actual article archive of Assembly Magazine and Machine Design, with their real case records and engineering methods — not vendor slide decks. You leave with a repeatable DFA/DFM review method you can run on your next program before the design is frozen.

Ideal Learner

• Product and mechanical engineers designing mechanical and electro-mechanical assemblies
• Manufacturing, process, and assembly engineers who own line design, cycle time, and assembly quality
• DFM/DFA program engineers and design-review leads who must approve designs before tooling
• Supplier-quality and industrial engineers evaluating supplier assembly processes and automation proposals
• Industry segments: automotive OEM/Tier 1, consumer products, appliance, electronics, medical devices, industrial equipment

Learning Objectives

• Develop an assembly sequence and identify the plan's cost and quality drivers before the line exists
• Select joining methods from the full menu — mechanical fasteners, snap-fits, press-fits, adhesives, ultrasonic/vibration/laser/hot-plate welding, soldering — using joint requirements, materials, volumes, and service demands
• Apply mechanical fastening discipline: fastener selection, insertion methods, torque control, and the fastener-variety reduction that transforms line-side quality
• Design snap-fits and press-fits with correct strain and retention calculations for the resin in use
• Evaluate automated assembly options honestly: when automation pays, feeding and orientation requirements a design must meet, and the cost of parts that jam
• Run a DFM economic analysis — part-count reduction, fastener elimination, commonality — with defensible cost arithmetic
• Apply tolerance and datum strategy for assembly and specify designs that can be serviced and disassembled in the field

Consulting Sessions

Seminar attendees can sign up for individual consulting sessions with the instructor. Sessions are free for registered attendees, first-come first-served — sign up when registering by calling 248-539-0473 or during the seminar.