News / A laser-focused vision: the quiet rise of additive manufacturing

A decade ago, frantic media suggested that a 3D printer in every home would replace conventional supply chains, with toys and gadgets traded instead as digital schematics for on-demand, in-situ production. Now, in the hype-cycle-weary year of 2025, injection-moulded tchotchkes still reign, and the prevailing impression of additive manufacturing (AM) is that of another oversold technology that failed to live up to its pitch.

But this elides the truth of an industry that has refocused, advanced technologically at blistering pace, and begun the unglamorous business of scaling, training, and populating important sectors like aerospace, medical, and energy generation.

“In 2014 the early adopters were the aviation industry, engine manufacturers started to use AM for critical components, injectors — and the medical industry started to use AM for hip implants,” Fabian Alefeld, director of business development at EOS, told The Loadstar. “That was also before we knew how vulnerable supply chains were, before Covid, the Red Sea attacks, inflation. Really, there wasn’t much need for localising manufacturing back before 2020, right?”

Now though, for these early adopters, AM has become indispensable. Today, it is an umbrella term encompassing various means of fabricating metal objects, and the widely-used term ‘3D printing’ is no longer sufficient.

In one application, EOS manufactured an upper-stage rocket engine for the Ariane programme, combining some 248 discrete parts into one. EOS used laser sintering – shooting lasers at metal particles in a powder tub – to instantly weld grains of IN718 nickel-alloy. This replaced a process of sourcing, casting, brazing, welding, and drilling that would have taken months.

With 3,000°C heat and channels of super-cooled liquid separated by millimetres of metal, it is hard to imagine a higher-stress application than a rocket engine. So high is the engine  failure rate that commercial operator SpaceX hedges by using 33 of them on a single stage.

“Now you can print these thrust chambers and cooling channels all in one piece,” said Mr Alefield. “There are additive parts on the lower stage vehicles all the way up to the payloads.”

Cutting waste is another important value offering for AM. Spectacles are manufactured on a one-size-fits-all basis, with minimum order volumes in the hundreds, and long lead times of six months or more, leaving eyewear trends nearly impossible to predict.

“So you overproduce in seven out of ten models, just because you don’t know what is going to sell,” Mr Alefield said.

Eyewear AM offers on-demand production matched to individual face shapes, leaving even the cost premium of boutique AM production favourable next to ordering hundreds of unsold frames – some 40%.

Rapid-prototyping AM can rapidly increase new designs’ time-to-market, even if ultimately, the part is transferred to subtractive, large-scale production. Spare parts can be rapidly iterated and deployed in situ, keeping even long-obsolete machinery in operation. (Your correspondent sports a 3D-printed zirconium canine and titanium collarbone).

“There is a lot of waste in current supply chains due to overproduction. So we do see companies moving towards an additive, on-demand model, reducing inventory and incurring less waste as a result.”

Using less material overall, AM also offers one of the most promising pathways for recycling materials. At Continuum in Texas, aerospace-grade titanium, nickel and steel are re-atomised into powder. For many metals, the process can be repeated hundreds of times without material degradation. This repeatability is another aspect of AM that is steadily improving.

“On the polymer side, there are materials like TPU that can be reused 100%,” Mr Alefield explained. “Just a few years ago, certain materials needed a 50% refresh with virgin material. Today it’s 20%.”

AM does have critical limitations, though, preventing more widespread adoption thus far.

“If we compare the cost of an injection-moulded part produced 10 million times a year, low-complexity consumer applications, AM is not going to be cost competitive. None of us in the industry believe it’s going to replace all conventional manufacturing.

“I would say another limitation is the workforce,” Mr Alefield added. “In aerospace and medical, we’re very solid. But in other areas, you simply don’t have a very experienced additive engineer at every company, and I think most companies still struggle to truly grasp the potential.”

The iterative process of AM production makes for a clear overlap with AI, improving structural stability and decreasing waste.

“AI is a huge enabler for AM. These types of tools will really allow companies to ramp up expertise quickly, and push the limits of the technology.”

Today’s tough trade and supply chain environment is rekindling interest in the sector. The harder it becomes to restock inventories and predict demand, the faster the value proposition of AM increases. Increased defence spending in Europe, and a move towards self-reliance in manufacturing, are both bullish signals.

“A lot of AM providers are based in Europe,” said Mr Alefield. “If you want to reshore manufacturing, I think you should reshore high-value, critical manufacturing.

“Additive is going to continue to play a very big role here, in advanced technologies, in semiconductors. If you talk to anyone in AM, they will say they have more projects than people. If we can become more efficient, as an industry, there’s a lot of growth.”