Ask anybody who has attended RAPID + TCT throughout a number of years what retains them coming again, and the solutions converge on the identical factor: the calibre of dialog the occasion makes attainable. Engineers discuss to executives. Researchers discuss to operators. Individuals who hardly ever share a room discover themselves sharing an issue.
The newly launched Important AM monitor within the 2026 convention is designed round that very same precept. Spanning design for additive manufacturing (DfAM), post-processing, requirements, repeatability, AI, and enterprise case improvement, it’s intentionally cross-sector moderately than industry-specific.
Operating from 13 to 16 April, the convention program is open to practitioners from any sector working by the more durable questions, each earlier than and after a profitable construct. The present ground and expo opens the next day, the 14th.
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Forward of the occasion, I requested three of the monitor’s audio system to debate what previous attendance on the convention has meant for his or her work, and what they’re bringing to RAPID + TCT 2026 in Boston this yr.
Price-Pushed Planning: Maximizing Revenue in Additive Manufacturing – Huba Horompoly, Co-Founder and Managing Associate, Gravity Pull Programs
Horompoly has a selected manner of describing what RAPID + TCT does properly, as he explains, “RAPID + TCT is likely one of the few locations the place you possibly can discuss to everybody within the worth chain in two days: machine OEMs, service bureaus, aerospace, medical primes, software program distributors, and researchers. That atmosphere forces you to attach the dots.”
For the Co-Founder, these dots saved pointing towards the gap between what an engineering staff considers successful and what a manufacturing atmosphere can really maintain. Qualification necessities, post-processing bottlenecks, scheduling constraints, the unglamorous calculus of construct vs. make selections. None of it options closely within the technical literature, however all of it determines whether or not a promising AM software ever scales.
That realisation formed the structure of Gravity Pull Programs instantly. PAAM handles toolpath and parameter optimisation on the print degree; SYNOPTIK takes the broader view, protecting scheduling, materials planning, post-processing capability, and real-time replanning. The 2 platforms are constructed as a pair as a result of, in Horompoly’s expertise, enhancing one in isolation means the positive aspects from the opposite are by no means totally realised.
His session in Boston will handle a query the {industry} has been circling with out fairly resolving: why does price hold stunning even skilled AM groups. He explains AM price isn’t a single determine however a system with interdependencies that commonplace estimating fashions are likely to flatten.
Yield assumptions, post-processing load, and reasonable utilisation charges are the variables mostly lacking from early enterprise instances, and mostly liable for the hole between projection and actuality.
He provides, “The most important step-change is often not a single ‘magic parameter’ — it’s standardizing decision-making so each job doesn’t depend upon tribal data.”
The session is instantly relevant to operations leaders, software engineers, program managers in aerospace and medical, and repair bureaus. Horompoly may also handle sustainability, working by the situations through which carbon and price optimisation align and people through which they don’t.
Style Meets Fabrication: Classes from a Designer Collaboration – Sylvia Heisel, CEO, Sylvia Heisel
Heisel arrived at RAPID + TCT from a unique route. Her background is in trend and design, and what she discovered when she began attending was a disconnect that stunned her in its scale.
She emphasizes, “I used to be, and nonetheless am, amazed that so few attire firms attend to study AM and that the AM of us who wish to work with the style {industry} know so little about attire provide chains. There’s such an enormous divide and an enormous alternative between these industries.”
What the convention gave her, throughout successive editions, was a extra calibrated sense of what’s genuinely attainable. Conversations with practitioners in different sectors sharpened her fascinated about the place AM may realistically transfer the needle for trend manufacturers, and the place the friction could be.
Her session, Style Meets Fabrication, is constructed round a lesson she has watched firms be taught the laborious manner. “The attire {industry} operates actually in another way from different design-centric industries. Success requires an understanding of how trend manufacturers operate and what they take into account a price. It’s as a lot about becoming into their workflow as it’s about delivering an excellent product,” she highlights.
Heisel notes that trend manufacturers function on timelines, approval buildings, and definitions of worth which might be largely invisible to these approaching the sector from a producing or engineering background, and her session is aimed squarely at that viewers.
She provides, “I’m very certain that trend presents an enormous alternative for AM. I hope delegates will depart questioning how they’ve approached working with the style {industry} and fascinated about new alternatives.”
Past the Construct: Standardizing Worth in Additive Manufacturing – Stephanie Lake, CEO and Founder, Subcomponents Plus
Lake arrange Subcomponents Plus to work on an issue that the AM {industry} has been struggling to formalise: tips on how to measure whether or not an AM software has really delivered. Earlier attendance at RAPID + TCT fed into how she approaches that query.
She explains, “As a substitute of assuming an answer should be utterly reinvented, I started searching for alternatives to reapply confirmed options throughout industries utilizing totally different additive processes, supplies, or manufacturing approaches.”
Her 2026 session will give delegates a structured technique to make that analysis throughout 5 areas: financial efficiency, manufacturing effectivity, repeatability and high quality, provide chain resilience, and workforce affect. It additionally tackles the narratives she considers persistently overstated: that additive robotically reduces price, that it eliminates moderately than redistributes provide chain complexity, and that geometric complexity carries no downstream penalties.
She attracts on analysis into presurgical planning as an instance the place measurable worth does materialise: patient-specific fashions derived from CT scans decreased operative time by 18-60 minutes per case and anaesthesia publicity by 25-45 minutes, positive aspects that carry even larger weight in rural healthcare settings the place entry to specialised planning assets are restricted.
The purpose for delegates is easy. Lake believes that the attendees “ought to have the ability to consider additive manufacturing tasks utilizing clearer metrics — understanding when additive manufacturing really delivers financial and operational worth, and when conventional manufacturing should still be the higher answer.”
The CEO concludes, “The true breakthrough in additive manufacturing isn’t printing the half — it’s understanding when printing the half really is sensible.”
Attend RAPID + TCT this April in Boston as a visitor of 3D Printing Business! Declare your free Expo Go or save 20% on a Convention Go.
3D Printing Business is inviting audio system for its 2026 Additive Manufacturing Purposes (AMA) sequence, protecting Power, Healthcare, Automotive and Mobility, Aerospace, Area and Protection, and Software program. Every on-line occasion focuses on actual manufacturing deployments, qualification, and provide chain integration. Practitioners all in favour of contributing can full the decision for audio system kind right here.
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Discover the complete Way forward for 3D Printing and Government Survey sequence from 3D Printing Business, that includes views from CEOs, engineers, and {industry} leaders on the industrialization of additive manufacturing, 3D printing {industry} developments 2026, qualification, provide chains, and additive manufacturing {industry} evaluation.
Featured picture reveals the every day Government Views Keynote Sequence kicks off every day earlier than convention periods start. Hear from the {industry} luminaries charting the way forward for AM. Photograph by way of SME.