With UK expertise debuts, an unparalleled free convention programme, and ample networking alternatives, right here’s 25 issues to see at TCT 3Sixty, the UK’s definitive additive manufacturing and 3D printing occasion, on June 4th-Fifth on the NEC Birmingham.
1) The TCT Convention
A packed two-day, two-stage convention showcasing AM functions throughout defence, aerospace, shopper items and healthcare, plus key traits and future developments. Guests get free entry to talks from organisations similar to Ministry of Defence, GKN Aerospace and Sartorius, alongside The Manufacturing Know-how Centre, Boston Consulting Group and extra.
2) 3T-AM | #D48
Because the UK’s largest unbiased AM contract producer, 3T-AM is dispelling misconceptions about additive manufacturing with a single philosophy. ‘The entire provide chain in a single manufacturing facility.’ 3T’s digital roadmap is driving effectivity and deeper information insights throughout the whole worth stream. By embedding a full digital thread, the corporate says it’s chopping waste, accelerating lead occasions, and enhancing high quality, empowering smarter selections and higher worth for purchasers.
3) Mission TAMPA
The UK Ministry of Defence’s Mission TAMPA was created in 2021 to speed up using AM throughout the UK defence trade. Following the publication of the MOD’s first superior manufacturing technique with AM as its central focus, Mission TAMPA will host its second assembly of 2025 on day one in every of TCT 3Sixty.
4) TCT UK Consumer Group
The day earlier than the doorways swing open to TCT 3Sixty, the third annual TCT UK Consumer Group Assembly will convene on the NEC for a full day of discussions surrounding the challenges and options dealing with UK AM adoption. It is invite-only so register your curiosity at tct3sixty.com.
5) SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT | Javaid Butt
Professor of Manufacturing and Product Design, Birmingham Metropolis College
Optimising Additive Manufacturing with AI and Digital Twin – Add to your occasion agenda
Insights Stage | 05 June | 13:50
TCT: Why the precise concentrate on materials extrusion-based 3D printing?
JB: Materials extrusion stays some of the accessible and extensively used 3D printing applied sciences on account of its low value, ease of operation, and materials versatility. Nevertheless, its industrial adoption is hindered by challenges like poor mechanical properties and floor end, problem in optimising processing parameters, and the unpredictability of faults throughout prints. These points typically result in trial-and-error experimentation, losing time and sources in addition to limiting scalability for high-performance functions.
TCT: You’re discussing combining two vital future-facing applied sciences – AI and digital twins. How essential is it that the manufacturing trade leans into these applied sciences as we speak?
JB: AI and digital twins aren’t simply future ideas, however have turn out to be indispensable enablers of agility, sustainability, and competitiveness. As manufacturing shifts towards sensible, data-driven operations, these applied sciences enable corporations to optimise processes, cut back downtime, improve effectivity, and customise manufacturing in actual time. Corporations that delay funding in and adoption of those applied sciences will discover themselves lagging behind.
TCT: In a single sentence, why ought to guests come to this discuss?
JB: To find how AI-powered digital twins can unlock the subsequent technology of dependable, environment friendly, and scalable extrusion-based 3D printing.
TCT: One ultimate thought?
JB: I imagine that innovation in AM is not primarily about machines and supplies however is more and more changing into extra about information intelligence. Digital twins and AI collectively redefine that intelligence, providing a pathway to smarter, sustainable, and extra adaptable manufacturing.
6) Co-located Occasions
Use your TCT 3Sixty badge to enter Med-Tech Innovation Expo, the UK’s main occasion for medical machine manufacturing, plus the Med-Tech Innovation Convention.
7) TCT Awards
With 11 expertise and utility classes, inductions into the TCT Corridor of Fame, plus this yr’s TCT Girls in 3D Printing Innovator and SMF Rising Star Awards, the TCT Awards on June 4th is the AM trade’s greatest celebration.
8) Data Bar
Received a technical query? The Data Bar powered by Additive Manufacturing UK (AMUK) provides free 1-2-1 recommendation from a range AM consultants.
9) TCT 3Sixty App
Get a head begin with our AI-powered matchmaking and proposals, and join with attendees, audio system, and exhibitors earlier than the occasion.
10) PrintCity | #G18
On its TCT 3Sixty sales space this yr, PrintCity MMU will probably be internet hosting a dwell design competitors throughout each days of the present. Day one’s competitors will pit 4 Manchester Metropolitan College MSc college students towards one another, whereas day two will welcome members of most of the people.
The competitors – which will probably be judged by AM trade professionals Andrew Allshorn, Robin Dallen, Claire Scott, and Steve Cox – will take a look at every participant’s capability to optimise half designs to exhibit energy and high-performance in a repeatable method inside a strict time restrict.
Product Improvement Specialist Mark Chester mentioned: “We’re excited to showcase additive manufacturing in motion this yr at TCT 3Sixty. It offers a improbable alternative to see all features of 3D printing along with our unimaginable MSc college students on day one.”
11) SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT | Tom Ranson
3D Visualisation Specialist, Pure Historical past Museum – Add to your occasion agenda
Scan You Dig It? 3D Know-how for Museum Analysis, Conservation and Exhibition
Insights Stage | 04 June | 14:00
TCT: First, are you able to clarify the way you’re utilizing 3D applied sciences to make artefacts extra accessible to the general public?
TR: My particular lab I’m accountable for right here on the NHM is the 3D Vis Lab, and we focus solely on floor imaging. So with my laser scanners, mild reconstruction scanners and Infinite Focus Microscopes, we picture the floor of just about something, to an accuracy of just a few microns, and may then both make that information accessible to the general public by means of portals like SketchFab, or we will be bodily printing them out to make use of in Outreach occasions.
TCT: And the way do you utilize this to help additional analysis into your collections?
TR: Think about you’re a researcher in Australia doing all of your PhD on the consuming patterns of the Tyrannosaurs Rex. Right here within the NHM we maintain the holotype (authentic instance that each one different T-Rex fossils are in contrast towards) of the jaw. As a substitute of an advanced and costly analysis go to to the UK to evaluate the microwear within the tooth of the specimen, I can picture the floor right down to an accuracy of 10s of microns and add the information to a portal all inside a day. We allow analysis to occur a lot sooner, after which the information is digitally preserved for the subsequent particular person to entry, decreasing potential injury to the unique by having to get it out once more to remeasure.
TCT: What would be the key learnings of your discuss at TCT 3Sixty?
TR: I hope that it’ll assist folks to see novel new methods we will apply this expertise to recent issues in any trade, not simply Heritage and Conservation. It is one in every of my favorite features of this job to take these analysis issues and get to unravel them by making use of expertise like this in a method that wasn’t beforehand thought-about.
12) TOP ADDITIVE | AM Futures | #H32
In a UK first, AM Futures will probably be exhibiting a spread of post-processing programs, together with the TCB 300 automated powder removing system and TVS-F20 powder conveyor and sieving station, all absolutely supported within the UK.
13) Globus Steel Powders
Sponsoring the TCT Awards, Globus Steel Powders (UK) are specialists in Nickel, Iron and Cobalt-Chrome-based powders for aerospace, area, energy technology, defence, nuclear, oil & gasoline and hydrogen. Utilizing a Vacuum Inert Gasoline Atomiser, the corporate produces prime quality and extremely repeatable powders with trade main low-levels of oxygen, important for profitable prime quality HIPped and LPBF elements.
14) ASTM Worldwide
Shaped in 2018, the ASTM Worldwide Additive Manufacturing Middle of Excellence (AM CoE) is a collaborative partnership amongst ASTM and organisations from trade, authorities, and academia, that conducts strategic R&D to advance AM requirements throughout the whole worth stream of additive manufacturing. The AM CoE will host a panel on the Insights Stage that includes audio system from ASTM, APWORKS and 3T-AM entitled ‘Again to the Future: Did We Get Our Predictions Proper, and What Comes Subsequent for Additive Manufacturing?’
15) Conflux | #J4
Conflux Know-how, an Australian producer of 3D printed warmth exchangers, not too long ago introduced the launch of a brand new facility within the UK. The location is slated to open later this quarter with a concentrate on R&D, supplies certification, and native buyer help.
16) EOS | #F28
EOS will current its next-gen beam shaping expertise, designed to raise manufacturing effectivity. Its mild engine is claimed to afford distinctive flexibility with beam shapes of assorted sizes that swap in a matter of microseconds, and enhanced course of stability and lowered course of by-products and spatter.
17) Europac3D | #D32
Europac3D is providing VoxelDance print preparation software program to the UK market. Suitable with a variety of 3D printers, the software program provides automated help technology, clever slicing, and customisable settings. An intuitive interface makes it simple to make use of, whereas its strong efficiency ensures exact management over each side of the printing course of.
18) Eplus3D | #G38
Eplus3D will display its serial metallic manufacturing capabilities and functions throughout industries similar to aerospace, automotive, tooling, and healthcare. After taking the lead within the multi-laser metallic race – 64 lasers on board its EP-M2050 system – Eplus3D additionally not too long ago debuted its copper printing capabilities at TCT Asia.
19) ADDiTEC | #C38
ADDiTEC’s new Laser Powder Mattress Fusion Know-how system is claimed to symbolize a major growth of its metallic 3D printing portfolio, complementing its Directed Vitality Deposition (DED) and Liquid Steel Jetting (LMJ) options to turn out to be one of many solely corporations on this planet to supply three complementary metallic AM applied sciences.
20) CDG Piocreat | #A40
CDG will launch Piocreat pellet 3D printers into the UK market. The G5 system is billed as an inexpensive desktop pellet printer whereas the G12 stands as an industrial machine designed for components as much as 1.2 metres in dimension.
21) 60-second Q&A | T3DMC | #H28
TCT: First, what would be the spotlight of your TCT 3Sixty sales space this yr?
T3DMC: At TCT 3Sixty this yr, we are going to showcase our cutting-edge automated and wi-fi 3D scanning options. These programs ship exact, repeatable measurements with minimal guide intervention, making them ideally suited for high-efficiency manufacturing environments. Guests will see dwell demonstrations of how our automated 3D scanning programs seamlessly combine with manufacturing workflows, capturing high-quality information. We may even spotlight our wi-fi 3D scanning expertise, designed for flexibility and mobility in advanced environments.
TCT: Wherein industries are you seeing essentially the most traction for these options?
T3DMC: Our options are making a major impression within the automotive, aerospace and energy and vitality sectors. In automotive, automated and wi-fi scanners streamline benchmarking, motorsport inspections, and design validation. In aerospace, high-precision reverse engineering options help the replication and redesign of important elements, guaranteeing security and efficiency. And in energy and vitality, our programs support within the upkeep of advanced equipment, offering information for efficiency monitoring and environment friendly restoration.
TCT: Who ought to cease by your sales space this yr?
T3DMC: Our stand is crucial for professionals in engineering, manufacturing, and product improvement who search environment friendly, automated options or wi-fi flexibility in 3D scanning. In case you goal to scale back guide effort, improve effectivity, and absolutely leverage 3D information, go to our stand for a dwell demonstration.
22) Carbon | #K10
The Californian 3D printing expertise firm will probably be showcasing its Carbon DLS expertise, which mixes versatile printers, superior software program, and supplies, utilized by organisations together with adidas, Ford, and Becton Dickinson.
23) Formlabs | #G35
Desktop stereolithography chief Formlabs will current its newest merchandise together with the Kind 4, Kind 4B, and Kind 4L, alongside current updates to its Kind Remedy and Powerful 1500 Resin geared toward levelling up 3D printing with injection moulding.
24) Stratasys | #K22
The 3D printing pioneer’s polymer applied sciences will probably be on show throughout a number of cubicles on the present flooring and can function in two panels throughout the Defence and Healthcare tracks as a part of the TCT Convention.
25) SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT | Sherri Monroe
Govt Director, AMGTA
Framing AM & Sustainability Throughout the Enterprise for Strategic Benefit – Add to your occasion agenda
Innovation Stage | 05 June | 14:30
TCT: Why is now the proper time to be having this dialog?
SM: The uncertainty of the previous couple of months and actually because the pandemic have actually put a highlight on new applied sciences and new enterprise practices. The necessity has by no means been higher for extra versatile, extra nimble, and extra useful resource environment friendly manufacturing and distribution. Organisations are centered on gaining extra management over provide chains and enabling extra round practices for key supplies.
TCT: Does AM worth, when it comes to sustainability, require a brand new mind-set?
SM: Too typically “sustainability” is considered as a value or a trade-off to financial viability – as a zero-sum recreation. When considered as “useful resource effectivity” there’s typically a unique notion. For manufacturing the sources to handle embrace materials vitality, and waste, but in addition time, capital, danger, and alternative. Managing these sources efficiently results in each improved environmental AND financial outcomes. New enterprise methods that aren’t tied to conventional manufacturing constraints will take a while, extra illustrative use-case research, and extra communication throughout the enterprise.
TCT: What’s the most typical AM sustainability false impression?
JB: A mistake I see throughout the sector, whether or not evaluating value or environmental impression, is getting tied up in a part-to-part comparability. These comparisons practically at all times solely measure a portion of the lifecycle or fail to incorporate adjoining impacts. For instance, if a printed half prices 10% greater than the normal half however the conventional half has a minimal order or manufacturing amount of 100, does the one half compared embrace the price of all 100 or at the very least a portion of the price to warehouse the opposite 99? Does it embrace the eventual obsolescence of a few of these warehoused components? Typically the saving isn’t within the half produced and used, however within the components not (over)produced and scrapped.
TCT 3Sixty will happen on June 4-Fifth on the NEC Birmingham, UK. Register free of charge to start out planning your agenda and making trade connections forward of the occasion.
