3rd Phoenix Hardware Meetup
**EVENT TONIGHT! Please reference these maps for directions & parking information: https://www.dropbox.com/t/Tv0SHzbfXWZH3w9o
Our next Hardware Meetup is on Wednesday, January 28th at the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation in Phoenix. If you’re building hardware in Arizona, we’d love to have you join the conversation!
🤖 If you have your own hardware to demo, bring it!
You'll have 2 mins during the Community Open Mic to demo a prototype or talk about what you are working on. We're looking for prototypes, finished products, and part samples from the hardware on your desks.
Agenda
6:00 - 6:45pm: Welcome & Networking
6:45pm - 7:00pm: Guest Speaker - Richard Gebhard, the old fart who created of "Resilient Modeling Strategy"
Contextual Mentors are the "Missing Link"
A contextual mentor is a solid modeling power user who can review the feature tree of someone else's problematic solid model and provide insights and constructive advice, provided the feature tree is "mentor friendly" (logical, annotated, and obvious). This is a mainstream activity in large CAD teams, and our goal is to empower independent CAD users to benefit from that same expertise.
7:00pm - 7:15pm: Guest Speaker - David De La Cruz, Director of Material Science Practice, Scientific Material Testing Laboratories (SMT Labs)
Seeing What Materials Don’t Want You to See: Real-World Failure & Reverse Engineering Case Studies
David will walk through two real-world case studies highlighting how advanced materials analysis is used to uncover failure modes and material composition challenges:
Case Study 1: Paint layer and coating analysis on metal components from a helicopter crash investigation
Case Study 2: Reverse engineering of materials within a speed sensor assembly to identify construction, material selection, and potential failure drivers
The talk will focus on practical lessons learned and how material characterization tools like SEM/EDS, FTIR, GCMS, Keyence Digital Microscope.. help engineers make better design and reliability decisions.
7:15pm - 7:45pm: Open mic
7:45 - 8:30pm: Mix, mingle, and wrap up the night
Thank you to our venue host!
The Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation (CEI) is a Phoenix-based incubator supporting entrepreneurs and technical teams bringing real products to market. Created by GateWay Community College and the Maricopa County Community College District, CEI provides space, resources, and community for innovators working to commercialize and scale impactful ideas.
Please ONLY register if you will attend. Otherwise, you are preventing another member of our community from going as there are limited spots available.
Thank you to our community partners!
informal is a freelance collective for the best independent professionals in hardware and manufacturing. Whether a client is looking for a single contractor, a full-time employee, or an entire team of professionals for product development or go-to-market, informal has the right collection of people for the job. https://www.informal.cc/contact/
Hardware Meetups happen across 30+ cities around the world, bringing together hardware professionals to network, share knowledge, and support each other and the larger hardware ecosystem.
If you want to help support the next meetup, please reach out to [[email protected]](http://mailto:[email protected]/) for sponsorship inquiries. See you soon!