MT Magazine March/April 2026

FEATURE STORY

14

THE STATE OF ADDITIVE ISSUE

The role of additive manufacturing might be described as point solutions. It is the transformative process for applications well-suited to additive, and these applications are scattered across different industries. (Image courtesy of EOS.)

a solution for end-use production – particularly when a part was designed with additive in mind. From this recognition emerged the additive manufacturing technology space as we know it today, comprising 17 distinct 3D printing processes, as defined by AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology, capable of providing production solutions across metal, polymer, composite, and ceramic materials. Yet there is an all-or-nothing sense to many of additive’s production wins: AM succeeds in some applications, while it is a poor fit for many others. When it does succeed, the success tends to be so total that we see a fade-out of the previous version of the product or the way it used to be made. The acetabular cup for hip surgery perfectly illustrates this. Until recently, in the production workflow for these implants, machining the form was separate from spraying the rough coating that integrates with the patient’s bone. AM eliminates the need for thermal spray due to the 3D printed part’s surface geometry, which is tailored to bone growth. The results have been transformative. By enabling both easier manufacturing and better design, additive has taken over acetabular cup production to such an extent that this method is no longer considered novel or necessarily promoted as an innovative use case. At EOS, a laser powder bed fusion AM technology supplier,

Focused, Powerful Wins Part of the work of the AMT Research Services group is ongoing monitoring and analysis of news developments about additive manufacturing – not just watching for breakthroughs, but also watching trends. Today, we are observing how a single broad trend in additive manufacturing unites and explains much of the recent AM news. That trend relates to the way AM adoption is not necessarily going wide but narrow and deep, with targeted adoption instead. AM is finding its place within focused production areas, where its impact is seen in both the end part and the process to create it. These niche applications are not necessarily connected, but what they have in common is that additive is able to produce them nearly complete. We see this theme of additive thriving within focused applications reflected in recent news of both AM’s advances and its retreats.

From Prototyping to Transformative Production

For context, consider the question again: Where does additive fit? Over a decade ago, industry found a new answer. What had been primarily a technology for prototyping and some tooling (two applications that remain important) also became