Speaker
Description
This contribution reviews the industrial maturation of additive manufacturing (AM) using data from Wohlers Report 2026 including the Q1 and Q2/2026 Updates, built on survey input from over 1,200 segments across 570 companies. For an audience working on linear accelerators, its value lies less, but for sure also, in overall market size than in what AM is now demonstrating for complex, high-reliability metal hardware built to tight tolerances.
Several materials and process advances stand out. 3D-printed copper cold plates and copper-diamond composites achieving up to 2.5 times the thermal conductivity of pure copper point toward improved heat management for high-heat-load components. Wire-arc AM of titanium alloys and metal AM of gas-turbine parts show complex, high-temperature-tolerant geometries reaching production, with one refinery component cutting costs 42% and lead time from six weeks to under 60 hours. New recovery and recycling routes for strategic metals — including nickel, titanium, tungsten, and niobium, the essential material for superconducting RF cavities — speak directly to the material-sourcing pressures accelerator programs also face.
The talk closes with four industry-wide themes: demand pulled by high-value technical applications, capital discipline, industry consolidation, and growing strategic control over materials, machines, and data — the same supply-chain concerns facing any national lab or accelerator facility sourcing precision, qualification-grade components.