Formnext Awards – setting the stage for AM progress

Brazil has strong Additive Manufacturing capabilities, but for years they were fragmented and hard to find. Companies did not know which service providers, research institutions or suppliers could solve their problems, and international partners had even less visibility. Mechanical engineer Luan Saldanha set out to change that.

He created the Additive Manufacturing Map of Brazil, an independent publication that makes the country's AM ecosystem visible and connected. Its fifth edition mapped 249 organizations, including equipment and material suppliers, service providers, science and technology institutions, startups and events, and was launched at the 3rd Petrobras Additive Manufacturing Workshop. The initiative then evolved into Aditiva Brasil, a digital platform that now maps more than 400 technological assets across industry, research, startups, suppliers, infrastructure and education.

Beyond mapping, Luan expands access to AM knowledge. He publishes Panorama MA, a Portuguese-language AM newsletter, runs the industrial news site Manufatura Digital, creates educational content on YouTube and Instagram, and teaches courses, lectures and postgraduate classes. His approach is technically rigorous and hype-free, aimed at industrial engineers and managers who need to make real decisions about adopting AM.

His work turns scattered knowledge into connections that support industrial adoption. As a Formnext AMbassador Award finalist, he aims to bring Brazil's AM ecosystem into stronger international dialogue and connect its capabilities with the global AM community.

Professor Leroy Gardner and the Steel Structures Research Group at Imperial College London are advancing the adoption of metal Additive Manufacturing in construction by translating research into practical structural engineering solutions. Their work combines experimental research, structural optimisation, design development, robotic metal 3D printing and full-scale testing to establish the knowledge and evidence needed for safe, efficient implementation.

The Group’s research includes pioneering full-scale demonstrators that have progressively expanded what structural AM can achieve. Its collaboration with MX3D contributed to the world’s first 3D-printed steel bridge, demonstrating the feasibility of metal AM at structural scale. The Imperial–Shimizu Garden Bridge showed how structural optimisation can exploit AM design freedom, while a full-scale hybrid steel 3D truss with AM nodes demonstrates how AM can bridge structurally optimised design and practical steel construction.

Through research, education, publications and close collaboration with industry, the Group works to lower barriers to adoption, build technical capability and move structural AM from innovation towards scalable construction practice.

The Additive Manufacturing Center (AMC) at TU Darmstadt is an open learning, research and technology transfer hub dedicated to making Additive Manufacturing accessible, understandable and applicable.

With a focus on metal powder processes, we demonstrate the complete physical AM process chain in our Technical Center – from alloy development and ultrasonic powder atomization to PBF-LB/M and high-speed DED manufacturing, post-processing, and quality assessment through mechanical testing and materials analysis such as CT scanning. By combining the expertise of 13 institutes from mechanical engineering, materials science and civil engineering, we create a truly interdisciplinary environment. Researchers, students, technicians, start-ups and established companies can learn, experiment and develop new solutions side by side.

A central part of our mission is building the skilled workforce AM needs for the future. Each year, 50–60 students complete our courses, more than 20 student projects are carried out in our labs, and our research has contributed to 10 PhD theses in three years. Together with trade organizations such as IHK Rhein-Main, we introduce 40+ technical apprentices to AM, while more than 50 engineers and technicians from industry are trained through AMC workshops and partner events. Open lab days and guided tours reach another 200–300 visitors annually.

Beyond education, we lower entry barriers for SMEs, start-ups and public organizations by offering feasibility assessments, design support and access to industrial-grade AM equipment before investments are made. Partnerships with VDMA, HessenMetall and Hessen Trade & Invest extend our reach into industry and strengthen the AM ecosystem in the Frankfurt-Darmstadt region and beyond.

For us, AM is not only about machines and processes. It is about people, skills, safe and responsible practice, and creating an environment where new users can turn ideas into real applications.

Agnikul Cosmos is redefining access to space through a single-piece, 3D-printed semi-cryogenic rocket engine conceived for additive manufacturing from the first design decision. 

Its sculptural form follows performance: every contour supports flow, cooling, combustion, heat transfer or structural load. Metal laser powder bed fusion enables tightly routed internal geometries that would be extremely difficult, time-intensive or uneconomical to produce conventionally. The digital, tool-less route also accelerates iteration and reduces production from months to days.

Its successful flight in the Agnibaan SOrTeD mission in 2024 proved that smart DfAM can move beyond prototyping to flight-critical performance, enabling more responsive and accessible launch services.

Computational Bra is a fully 3D printed bra that explores how computationally designed textile structures can shape elasticity, support and compression within a full garment. 

Inspired by engineered knitwear, where different structures are assigned to different zones of a garment, Maya Kaplan developed a library of algorithm-based textile structures that range from expandable and flexible to rigid and supportive.

An algorithm in Grasshopper maps the bra by function and assigns the structures accordingly: the cups expand to take the volume of the breast, the underbust is firmer and replaces the underwire, and the straps combine strength with elasticity and recovery. G-code is generated directly from Grasshopper, giving full control over toolpath, extrusion and speed.

The pattern is divided into pieces sized to fit the printer's build plate, and an innovative approach was developed to connect them: the print head itself is used as a sewing machine. A series of printed stitches, each with different performance characteristics, was developed by programming the print head's toolpath to move non-linearly in space, joining the pieces together.

Bone cancer in youth often forces amputation or destructive mega-prostheses, such as sacrificing the knee joint. This monolithic, anatomy-conformal titanium implant redefines pediatric oncology. 

Instead of permanent disability, the patient returned to active sports - turning cancer survival into true functional recovery.

Many engineers need parts with features too small, too detailed or too complex for conventional manufacturing, and have never thought 3D printing could make them. The microArch® S150 Series was built for them.

For years, features at this scale meant micromachining, lithography, micro-molding or manual assembly, with long lead times and tooling costs. The S150 lets engineers print those parts themselves and go from CAD to functional part in days instead of weeks or months. They can design for performance first rather than around manufacturing limits, and combine several components into one printed part.

Customers use BMF's PµSL technology for microfluidic channels, fiber optic components, biomedical devices, RF and millimeter-wave structures and electronic components. As Sonion put it, BMF parts "truly mimic expensive micro molded parts," without the wait.

The S150 is commercially available and already in use. What sets it apart isn't a single spec. It's who can now use micro-precision additive manufacturing.

Help us bring micron-level printing to more engineers: vote for the microArch S150 in the Formnext (R)Evolution Award, and see it in person at Formnext in Frankfurt.

The dental industry produces and discards 1.1 million resin models per day. Fyous are unveiling the solution at Formnext. Their GHOST machine lets dental labs produce aligners and retainers without having to print, cure, wash or dispose of a model. All whilst using the same thermoforming blanks from their current workflow.

Engineering polymers absorb moisture from the air, often within hours and even straight out of a sealed box. Wet filament prints weak, rough and unpredictably. Until now the only answer was to stop and wait: up to 48 hours of oven pre-drying before a job could start, with no guarantee the material would still be dry at hour 100 of a long print. Drywise removes the wait. 

A sealed active drying path of 1.2–1.3 m, a closed-loop self-regenerating desiccant circuit and sensor-controlled feedback hold the material at its target condition for the whole print, so the first layer and the hundredth arrive in the same state.

The result is not only faster. Against oven-dried nylon, Drywise parts gained around 7% tensile strength perpendicular and 12% parallel — a better baseline, not a marginal gain. 

cAIclone builds AI-optimized, 3D-printed hydrocyclones for fine-particle separation in the 1–50 µm range – the blind spot of mechanical processing. 

Conventional hydrocyclones, designed by decades-old correlations and castable geometries, cut too bluntly: valuable fines end up in waste streams.

 cAIclone closes an automated loop of CFD simulation, Bayesian optimization and additive manufacturing that tailors cut point and separation sharpness to each task – with free-form geometries only AM can produce.

Demonstrated on real battery materials; patent pending.

Beachhead: battery recycling.

Pre-founding team from Munich, member of TUM Venture Lab Additive Manufacturing, partnering with three TUM chairs and Fraunhofer ISC.

FlexCycle Solutions produces copper powder for additive manufacturing and powder metallurgy from electronic waste and industrial residues from electronics manufacturing. The process is purely mechanical: no melting, no chemicals, no water.

The company is currently being set up as a spin-off from the Institute of Mineral Processing Machines and Recycling Systems Technology (IART) at TU Bergakademie Freiberg, building on doctoral research into metal recycling for additive manufacturing, with a founding team spanning process engineering, materials science, and business development. 

SpaceForm is developing Vacuum Atomised Suspension Printing (VASP), a new metal additive manufacturing architecture originally conceived to enable powder-bed manufacturing in microgravity.

SpaceForm is now developing VASP as a micro-to-meso metal manufacturing platform, bridging the gap between high-precision micro-AM and industrial metal additive manufacturing. Initial applications include RF components, advanced thermal management and precision fluidics.

VASP has already demonstrated multilayer processing in titanium and stainless steel, including dense 316L samples with no visible porosity under optical microscopy.

Originally developed through the European Space Agency’s Open Space Innovation Platform, the technology is now being advanced for industrial applications on Earth and, ultimately, autonomous manufacturing in space.

additiveStream4D was founded 2022 in Berlin and develops retrofit technology that enables standard metal LPBF systems to manufacture precisely on existing geometries. 

The platform enables two main applications. With hybrd.AM, conventionally manufactured preforms provide simple, cost-efficient base geometries, while LPBF adds only the complex and high-value features. This reduces unnecessary additive build volume and opens new opportunities for applications such as advanced cutting tools and other high-performance components.

The machine-independent approach is designed for existing industrial LPBF fleets and allows manufacturers to extend the capabilities of their installed equipment. By combining high-precision powder bed fusion with conventional manufacturing and repair, additiveStream4D aims to make hybrid manufacturing more scalable, economical and resource-efficient.

The AX-150 makes complex metal parts available in-house, overnight. A 3D-printed plastic model is embedded in a proprietary investment compound, burned out and cast under vacuum. It is a process that has been standard in industry and jewellery for decades, now automated end to end in a single machine that runs on a standard power outlet, without lasers and without powder.

Melting furnace, burnout furnace and exhaust catalyst sit in one system, and the catalyst is what makes indoor operation possible in the first place. Aluminium, zinc, copper, silver and gold alloys. No training, no infrastructure, no dedicated room.

What changes is the loop: parts designed and printed in plastic, delivered in metal, in a day instead of weeks, with development cycles that no longer wait on external suppliers. The system covers rapid prototyping through to small-series and near-production components.

This is not a concept. Systems have been running at industrial customer sites since 2025, across mobility, defence and precision manufacturing. Patent pending.

The two founders, both from TU Munich, built the machine from first prototype to commercial systems without external financing, funded by the customers who bought them. Series production is under way.

Hydra’s flagship product is the Ceramic Hybrid Additive Manufacturing Platform (CHAMP), which combines paste extrusion, green-state machining and in-process inspection within one machine.

CHAMP includes our patent-pending extrusion system, which optimises the flow of material, streamlining the development of new material formulations. Combined with our in-process monitoring system, CHAMP reduces the likelihood of defects occurring and allows for corrective actions to be performed mid-print, saving material, energy and time. The combination of speed, precision and reliability removes obstacles from development cycles, creating new opportunities for next-generation ceramic parts. 

Make the mistakes in simulation – not in the build. Using QH Build, a WLAM case presented in a published scientific paper achieved ~72% shorter deposition time and ~64% lower cost per part. 

QH Build combines industrial robotics, multiphysics simulation, and a controller-aware digital twin to reduce costly trial-and-error in metal DED.

Sallea’s 3D-printed wash-out tooling & core technology makes it easier to create lightweight parts with complex shapes. The temporary core is removed with water after production, enabling greater design freedom and fewer assembly steps. 

First applications focus on thermoset CFRP for motorsport & sporting goods, with future use to create lightweight, complex injection molded parts made from thermoplastic composites, silicone, and metals.

Turn carbon data into better manufacturing decisions. Baker Hughes’ Manufacturing Carbon Platform (MCP) gives additive manufacturing teams clear, traceable insight into environmental impact – from quotation to delivery. 

The aim of the project is to ensure that spare parts are available cost-effectively (excluding transport costs) and promptly (without the need for supply chains or delivery times). 

The data required for this is available for download in DIGITALSOURCE (a cloud-based spare parts catalogue). The customer only pays for production data that has been downloaded and actually used to print a part.

Great importance is attached to ease of use for the customer, as well as to the reuse of components already incorporated into the design – a significant contribution to reducing costs and environmental impact.

FlexCycle Solutions turns copper production scrap into powder for additive manufacturing and powder metallurgy, without ever melting it.

Our feedstock is electronic waste. When remelted, such waste lose up to 30 % of their material through burn-off, which is why they are often downcycled. We keep this copper in the loop and upcycle it into a high-value product: 100 % secondary raw material, sourced regionally in Europe, reducing dependence on primary copper and global supply chains.