Resource shortages are a mayor issue for many industries not only due to supply chain disruptions, but also from a sustainability perspective. That is why, we and our members are also addressing the issue of reusability of materials for medical applications – which have even tougher requirements than many other applications.

Therefore, on March 23, 2023, members of our Medical Materials Working Group met at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin to launch our new focus group “Analyses & Processings”. A special thank you to Dr Norbert Löwa who was a great host and guided the participants around the site as a little highlight. A very informative keynote by Amelie Victoria Banhart from DIN on the various AM relevant standards rounded out the program.

We are very pleased to announce that the Focus Group will be led by Edson Costa Santos (ZEISS Group) – and in this role Edson directly created a questionnaire on the reuse of metallic and polymer powders, which the group will now communicate to interested network members.

The biggest issue for the Focus Group is to establish a set of methods that will give us data on the reuse of materials that have gone through a printing process, especially with regard to medical devices. To do this, we need lots of background knowledge on existing standards, on analyses and the expertise of all those interested in this topic area – this is where we need the input of our members!

Now the network is in demand and we are looking forward to active cooperation in this new project. Let’s get started together! If you are interested, please contact Dr. Cora Lüders-Theuerkauf

We all know what our respective companies can do but when it comes to Additive Manufacturing and advancing the technology, it is important to every once in a while step outside the box and take a look at the big picture.

Which is why together with Berlin Partner for Business and Economy (big thank you to David Hampel, Markus Facklam, Magdalena Radkowski & Sybille Weimann) and with support from the Berlin Business Office, USA, as well as the German American Chamber of Commerce, we organised a Tech-Journey to New York and Boston as well as the participation in an AM event at the US East Coast at the beginning of February 2023.

The delegation was a mix of Berlin/Brandenburg based companies as well as members of the MGA-community with strong ties to the region due to their work within the network.

Our trip started on a Monday in New York and after mastering the NY subway (yes, we did see a rat or two) we arrived at the Brookly Navy Yard for the first company visits and gained insights into the workings of US startups.

At the Yard and within the NewLab facilities one can find an atmosphere providing inspiration and room for growth for multiple amazing ideas. Many of the tenants of the area use AM in different ways: they for example develop important software for quality assurance for the production process (Nanotronics), they print clay to develop the sustainable cities of the future or design Cobod systems with AM (Terreform ONE) or produce for example more patient-friendly dosage systems for drugs (10XBeta Venture Studio).

While our IAM Hub in Berlin is aiming to be as inspirational as the Brooklyn Navy Yard, gaining insight into the working StartUp Hub in New York has definitely given us a lot to think about. One of the many questions we take home: how can we get more funding for AM projects or more support from the government in general for our industry?

Monday night 3DPrint.com hosted an amazing pre-event night at the Brooklyn Nets Basketball home – the Barkley Arena. Thanks again for this experience of true American sport and show, where the home team put up a great fight but was in the end defeated by the slightly superior LA Clippers.

Tuesday and Wednesday we spend at the Additive Manufacturing Strategies, New York City’s only 3D printing trade show, hosted by 3DPrint.com in a beautiful venue in Manhattan. John Meckler, Joris Peels and Lawrence Gasman welcomed our delegation with open arms, and we were treated to inspiring speeches and great networking opportunities – not just at the Bavarian Night hosted by AM Ventures with Pretzels and Beer.

Berlin Partner hosted their own AMBER session, showcasing the opportunities that Berlin offers to startups and AM companies and also gave our delegation members the chance to present themselves on stage to the guests of the trade show. Learn more

MGA was the sponsor of the first ever TRANSPORTATION vertical at the AMS hosting keynotes from members of our delegation on the different modes of transportation:

• Railway: Helge Schneevogt, DB
• Approval in Rail: Max Kunkel, Siemens
• Seafaring (Defence): Sascha Hartig, German Navy
• Automotive: Jürgen Jenner, Mann + Hummel – as part of a panel together with Cora Leibig from Chromatic 3D

Also part of the transportation vertical were keynotes from the NASA (Paul Gradl) and Boeing – rounding off the topic with aerospace and space transportation.

What are we taking home from the AMS?

Failure is sometimes more educational than success,

• 10 percent of rail parts today can be 3D printed,
• NASA is going big with large metal parts,
• AM possibilities are nearly endless and far from exhausted,
• Recycling of material is very much in demand,
• AI can become a key factor for success,
• Investors are still very interested in the technology.

On Wednesday night we boarded a train to Boston (interesting experience using the AMTRAK, we still do appreciate the European Railways 😉) to continue experiencing as much as possible.

Thursday was all about metal printing which is why a bus took us a little way out of Boston to VulcanForms (where we were welcomed by Martin C. Feldmann, their Co-Founder, President & CEO and amazingly enough a graduate of the RWTH Aachen) and then on to DesktopMetal (meeting Tyler Harrington and Thomas Nogueira).

What truly fascinated our delegation was the sheer amount of money that the US spends on defence. In the year 2022 the Department of Defence had a budget of $ 1.64 Trillion (source: https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=2022). It therefore comes as no surprise that a lot of AM startups and companies are involved in the defence (or aerospace) sector in the US. The question is: do the European companies want a piece of that pie or are we concentrating on more peaceful sectors of the industry?

What else are we taking home? There are a lot of great ideas on how to make AM more sustainable for example by printing sustainable materials such as wood, or by making supply chains more sustainable by sending out smaller parts that can be enlarged on site (check out printed foam for that one). In order for the industry to be able to compete with other production technologies, we need to find that certain edge and be able to perfect it!

In the evening of our second night in Boston the German Consul General Boston, Dr. Sonja Kreibich, hosted our delegation at a networking event with the goal of connecting the delegation with interested parties from the Boston area. Thanks to Victoria Kaeser & Susanne Johnson for organising the event and for welcoming every member of the delegation on stage for their elevator pitches. We were happy to meet close to 70 people that night!

On the last day of our TechJourney we went back to school and visited the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as well as the renowned Harvard campus before our last stop on our route at the Formlabs location in Boston.

All in all we spend 5 days packed with company visits, networking and stage time and left the US East Coast with a clearer picture of what the AM community in New York and Boston is like. There is a lot that we can learn from them, but there is also a lot that they can learn from us and if we keep up the exchange that we started during that time, our industry can greatly benefit from the cooperation!

Thanks to the members of our delegation for being amazing travelling companions:

• 1000Kelvin GmbH – Dr. Katharina Eissing & Dr. Omar Fergani
• Photon Laser Manufacturing GmbH – Uriel Elliesen
• DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung GmbH – Helge Schneevogt
• XERION BERLIN LABORATORIES GmbH – Uwe Lohse
• Siemens Mobility GmbH – Maximilian Kunkel
• yoona.ai – Anna Franziska Michel
• Fraunhofer IPK – Tobias Neuwald
• FEHRMANN Tech Group – Mahendran Reddy
• Breuninger Management – Hans-Alfred Breuninger
• Navy Command of the German Navy – Sascha Hartig
• MANN+HUMMEL – Jürgen Jenner
• Berlin Partner – David Hampel & Markus Facklam
• Mobility goes Additive e.V. – Stefanie Brickwede & Berit Timmich

We are already planning the next TechJourney – stay tuned for updates!

If you have an idea for another TechJourney, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

The Fraunhofer DDMC 2023 conference will present fascinating developments in additive manufacturing and 3D Printing technologies. AM experts from industry and research will provide around 50 presentations in 19 sessions. Please check out our full program for details.

We are especially delighted to welcome four distinguished additive manufacturing experts as keynote-speakers at our conference – Aditya Chandavarkar (entrepreneur from India), Dr. Barbara Imhof (LIQUIFER Systems Group, Austria), Prof. Mihaela Vlasea (University of Waterloo, Canada) and Dr. Özlem Weiss (Expertants GmbH, Frankfurt am Main). You can find more information about them and the title of their lectures as well as the registration link on the conference website. Register now!

The traditionally evening event for networking will take place in the historical cellar of the Weihenstephaner, not far away from the conference hotel.

So, let us meet in Berlin on March 15 and 16, 2023!

The German American Chamber of Commerce, Inc., in collaboration with Berlin Partner für Wirtschafts und Technologie GmbH, is connecting Berlin-based companies with the innovation hub in Boston/Cambridge. The event is part of a weeklong delegation trip from February 6-10, 2023 with stops in New York and Boston.

Learn more

At the beginning of 2022, we were all still a little bit dazed from the pandemics firm grip on the global economy, but the year showed us that AM can be a solution to so many of the problems that became apparent during the last years: disrupted supply chains, material shortages, lack of space… Additive solutions were the topic at many tables.

The rising demand for additive solutions enabled us during the last 12 months to welcome another 17 new members to our MGA community – despite some companies struggling due to the pandemic, inflation and rising costs. Everyone is interested in boosting industrial AM to its full potential!

While our existing Working Groups such as Ecological Sustainability, Materials and RAILiability kept up their meetings, in May 2022 we also introduced a new Working Group into the network: Automotive was kicked-off to tackle AM-specific challenges of use cases from the automotive sector, such as motorsports, classic cars, commercial vehicles, buses and trucks, passenger cars and others. In November 2022, our medical division introduced its first Focus Group: under the umbrella of the Use Cases Working Group, MedTech & OT connects the various players in medical technology, including implant manufacturing and orthopaedic technology (OT), and focuses on everything from the development to manufacturing to testing and standardization of medical devices.

You – our members – asked us for new ideas for business opportunities in new fields for AM. So during the last months of 2022 we also set an agenda for the next Working Groups to be launched this year:

• Energy: No other industry has been under as much pressure the past year as the Energy sector – higher demand, faster delivery and easy access for everyone is in demand. How can AM help solve the rising problems of the demanding industry that usually produces under less-than-ideal circumstances (high pressure, high seas, deep underground…)? Are you interested in joining the new Working Group? Contact us to learn more!
• Mortar: Printing houses has been on the news lately – but how can we take the next steps in the printing of concrete, cement and other building materials? Are you interested in joining the new Working Group? Contact us to learn more!
• Analyses & Processing: The new Focus Group under the umbrella of Medical Materials kicks off on March 23 on focuses on on the questions: Can and may materials for medical applications be recycled, and if so, how? Learn more
• Veterinary Medicine: This new medical Working Group focusing on the implementation of AM in therapies of and treatments for animals already kicked-off in January 2023 and is on its way to success. Learn more

 

While hosting our Working Groups and pushing the topics of the divisions, we also once again educated the next generation and inspired them to maybe one day help us advance AM together:

• In January we welcomed a very bright student intern from a local school. The 13-year-old spend two weeks with us, learning about the advantages of 3D printing and gaining an insight into the work of an international network office – at the end he was so fascinated with the technology that he asked his parents for a desktop printer for his birthday. The next opportunity for student interns will be in April – if your kids are interested in spending their school mandated internship (a German thing) at MGA, please contact us.
• In April we welcomed 8 girls between the ages of 10 and 15 at our office for the Girls Day (an initiative from multiple German federal institutions to motivate young girls to enter technical and scientific professions). The girls spend an eventful day with our Managing Director Stefanie Brickwede and our Network Manager Medical Dr. Cora Lüders-Theuerkauf who told them about what it means to be a woman in the field of Additive Manufacturing – and of course they also learned how to print a little something on a desktop printer.

Over the summer we supported two Deutsche Bahn initiatives:

• First, we helped host a Kids University where more than 10 children spend a weekend with 3D printing experts to learn about the advantages of AM.
• Then we welcomed two groups of the RasselBAHNde, a holiday program during the summer holidays, where kids between the ages of 6 to 14 spend a week at the DB and visiting fun places – such as the office of the leading international network for industrial Additive Manufacturing. Following the visits, we received multiple inquiries from parents asking how they can learn more about the technology.

 

Of course, we also spend time educating grown-ups about the advantages of AM at multiple events and in interviews and podcasts. We supported numerous events and initiatives:

– 3D Pioneers Challenge (part of the jury)

– LightCon (member of the advisory board)

– AM Medical Days (founding partner)

– AM Forum (founding partner)

– Formnext (member of the Start-Up Challenge jury)

– AMBER (co-initiator)

– KI Park (member of the advisory board to enhance cooperation with AI)

– Fraunhofer IAPT (member of the “Kuratorium” [advisory board])

– Lightweighting Initiative (member of the strategic advisory board)

– Women in 3D Printing

– MGA/VDI Student Competition – Link Blogpost Student Competition

 

For the highlight of 2022 we like to remember the Women in AM Summit and the MGA Annual Meeting on October 12 & 13 in Berlin, where we welcomed so many of our members and friends and had a genuinely amazing time! Here our new Executive Board, Nicole Friedrich, Chairwomen – Deutsche Bahn; Johannes Emmelheinz, Vice Chairman – Siemens Mobility; Prof. Dr. Ing. Claus Emmelmann, TU Hamburg; Dr. Florian Thieringer, University Basel) and our new treasurer, Carmen Schmieder, Deutsche Bahn, were appointed by our members. We said thank you to our former Chairman Gorden Falk, our former Board Member Güngör Kara and our former treasurer Karsten Reinhardt. Once again, a big thank you for their work and dedication!And we ended the year with a high: in cooperation with one of our closest partners, Berlin Partner for Business and Technology, we organized the second TechJourney to Israel. Here we visited promising AM companies and institutions and learned about the 3D printing environment of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The trip was such a great success, that the next trip is nearly upon us already: on February 5 we embark on the adventure of experiencing the AM environment of New York and Boston!

We cannot wait to see what 2023 has in store for us and would like to thank our members for boosting AM with us!

On 13 January we launched what we than thought was our new Focus Group Veterinary Medicine. In that first kick-off meeting we came together with several veterinarians focusing on equestrian sports and identified challenges and needs of veterinarians using AM in animals’ treatment & therapy.

The takeaway of that first meeting: the variety and depth of topics in veterinary medicine have such a great potential for AM that we decided to create a Working Group instead of a small Focus Group!

One such core topic we identified on January 13 was the demand for materials suited for dental prostheses for horses.  Not only must the material be biocompatible, it should also have the same abrasion as the original teeth – a combination not easily achieved.

Why a Veterinary Working Group?
Because Veterinary medicine simplifies the entry into medicine for many providers, as the regulatory requirements are either very low compared to human medicine or are eliminated. What we learn here might just pave the way for AM in other fields of medicine.

• Do you want to learn more about this thrilling topic?
• Do you have further areas of interest and want to push AM in veterinary medicine?
• And lastly, do you want to support our veterinarians?

 

Veterinarians, material developer and service provider are welcome to join our next Working Group meeting on March 17, 2023! 
For more information, please contact Dr. Cora Lüders-Theuerkauf