The Advanced Manufacturing Now podcast recently brought together the full SME Media editorial team to debrief on the latest developments in additive manufacturing (AM), fresh off a series of industry events in Detroit. The co-located conferences, which included SME’s Rapid Plus TZT, Airdelf Manufacturing, and Fusion Events alongside SAE’s Annual World Congress and America Makes TRX Technical Review, drew a record crowd and buzzed with excitement about the future of 3D printing.
But as Editor-in-Chief Steve Plumb and his colleagues noted, the dominant theme was a noticeable shift in how manufacturers are approaching AM technology. “Something that I picked up as a theme, especially during some of the breakout panel discussions, was this notion of AM having to move from performance over or move to performance over personality,” said Amy Bryson, referencing a common refrain that “cool is not a business model.”
“People need to start talking about how AM, you know, can address the challenge of reliability, how companies can de-risk their investments in additive, and focus on cost per part, which will be critical to demonstrate, you know, or to help increase adoption of additive manufacturing,” Bryson explained.
That’s not to say there was a lack of impressive applications on display. Bryson highlighted Aero McLaren IndyCar team’s use of AM to rapidly prototype steering wheels customized to driver Kyle Larson’s preferences. “Aero McLaren was able to take Kyle’s feedback on the initial prototype, and make changes and produce new prototypes much more quickly than with traditional methods,” she said. “And that’s really important because, as Corey Drake from Aero McLaren said, the green light doesn’t wait.”
Panelists and exhibitors alike seemed to agree that AM has matured to the point of being a valuable tool in the manufacturing toolkit, rather than an industry unto itself. “Some of us might remember Fried Van Crane, for example. He was the chairman of the board at Materialize,” noted Lawrence Moebs. “He reiterated his assertion that referring to additive as the AM industry is a misnomer. It’s not an industry, it’s a technology, it’s a tool in the toolkit.”
Another promising trend, according to new team member Carey Gitter, was the degree of cross-pollination happening between sectors. “I attended a panel on Leveraging Cross-Industry Knowledge, and there were panelists from Medical, Aero, Auto, all kind of sharing what they’ve learned from AM users in different fields,” Gitter said, citing examples like the Mayo Clinic tapping sculptors and special effects artists to create medical simulation models.
It seems like there’s a lot of activity among users of AM in terms of communicating with each other, coming together as a community, seeing what they can learn from those different applications and what they can incorporate into their own industries.
Of course, macro challenges like geopolitical instability and tariffs were an unavoidable topic. SME Media’s Cameron Kurkoo moderated a panel on the subject, which took an unexpected turn. “Things got really exciting midway through. It was actually announced that the latest round of tariffs were being paused,” recounted Steve Plumb. “So we had to scramble on stage and update the conversation in real time to address the new information.”
Despite the headwinds, Plumb came away from the event with confidence in AM’s trajectory, bolstered by insights from interviews with over 40 industry leaders at the on-site SME Media Studio. Those conversations reinforced the central message: As additive manufacturing continues to mature, the focus must be on demonstrating its practical, cost-effective applications across industries.
“Luckily, I was with a bunch of pros who immediately put things into perspective and made sense of everything,” Plumb said of his co-panelists. With AM experts increasingly prioritizing real-world solutions over hype and “cool factor,” the technology seems poised to hit its stride in 2025 and beyond.
To hear the full conversation and access SME Media’s library of interviews from the Detroit events, visit advancedmanufacturing.org. And mark your calendars for the Manufacturing Technology Series, coming to West Springfield, Massachusetts on May 13-15.
