Meltio Named Enterprise 3D Printer of the Year (Metals)

for the 2024 3D Printing Industry Awards.

LONDON, UK, Dec 18, 2024 – The international Additive Manufacturing community has chosen Meltio as the company winner of the Enterprise 3D printer of the Year (Metals) for the 2024 3D Printing Industry Awards. The Spanish multinational has won this prestigious recognition in the global AM sector for its innovation developed this year: the new Meltio M600 wire-laser metal industrial 3D printer.

This system, released in March 2024, astounds the global audience and additive manufacturing industry with its design and reliability for creating metal parts with different materials such as copper, aluminum, stainless steels, titanium, invar, Inconel, nickel for automotive, aerospace, oil and gas, mining, defense, and many other sectors.

The awards endevour to represent the rich diversity across the industry; this year’s winners, honorable mentions, and nominees span the market from desktop to industrial.

Meltio’s CEO, Ángel Llavero López de Villalta wanted to “congratulate the other winners in the different categories of the 3DPI 2024 award and I am also very proud of all the Meltio departments that have contributed to the conception of the Meltio M600. This powerful industrial metal 3D printer is being very well received by industrial customers around the world and is an example of the continuous effort and determination for innovation of the 120 professionals, partners and collaborators who rely on Meltio to revolutionize the way of manufacturing in the industrial sector worldwide.”

Readers worldwide and the Expert Committee have chosen the Meltio M600 metal 3D printer as this year’s winner of the Enterprise 3D Printer of the Year (Metals). After a long-running 3DPI Awards are acknowledged as the leading awards in our industry due to the rigorous evaluation criteria, including scrutiny by a committee of experts with over a thousand years of collective experience in AM and a public vote. More than 500 international companies participated in all nominations.

3D Printing Industry (3DPI), a trade news publication for the additive manufacturing sector, announced this week the winners list. Since its inception in 2016, these awards have highlighted the individuals, innovations, and enterprises that propel the 3D printing sector forward.

Lukas Hoppe, Meltio‘s research & development director, said, “We thank the entire audience and the 3DPI AM family for the award given this year 2024 to Meltio and its new and most powerful industrial metal 3D printer, Meltio M600. This recognition is a support to all the innovation effort of all the teams that are part of Meltio. The design brief for the new Meltio M600 was to imagine what the perfect 3D printer for the machine shop would look like. The vast majority of metal 3D printed parts require post-processing which is carried out in the machine shop and since our ambition is to push the large-scale adoption of metal additive manufacturing we have a very clear vision that the modern machine shop is the ideal point of entry. Manufacturing faces many challenges globally, from long lead times and stock-keeping costs caused by long and fragile supply chains to an ever-growing pressure to lower costs and reduce emissions.”

3D Printing has huge potential to address these issues as it helps reduce lead times, and manufacturing dependencies by printing parts in-house, reduces warehouse inventory as the raw material can be transformed into the final part on demand, and reduces costs by applying material only where it is needed.

Meltio’s R&D director Lukas Hoppe added, “The Meltio M600 for us was really the next logical step on our continuous journey towards mass adoption of wire-laser DED, the process all Meltio systems are based on. We began this work in earnest in 2019 when we started to leave the prototyping space with the launch of the Meltio M450. After learning from and improving the technology for three years, the time was finally ripe for us to work on the next system. Our goal with the Meltio M600 was to strike the right balance between machine size, cost, and productivity while being uncompromising on quality, reliability, and ease of use. To achieve this, we did not just create a “scaled up” M450, instead, we developed every single part of the machine from scratch to take the technology to the next level, based on the learnings of having manufactured and installed over 400 Laser Meltio DED systems around the world from 2019.”

Applications of the Meltio M600 wire-laser metal 3D printer

While the Meltio M600 is interesting to a broad range of sectors, the company’s goal was to design a system that fits right into any machine shop and works alongside CNC machines, creating value by reducing material waste, and lead times, allowing for increased manufacturing flexibility. To realize this vision our focus was a system that works like a machine tool, designed for lights-out manufacturing, and is easy to use, enabling existing operators to complete complex print jobs with minimal time investment.

These attributes make the Meltio M600 an exciting proposition for the manufacturing industry as a whole and get a lot of traction from a wide range of sectors: automotive, aerospace, oil & gas, mining, and defense.

To make this new tool for machine shop use a reality, the Meltio M600 is the first Industrial wire-laser metal 3D printer that incorporates, among other technological advances, a Blue Laser deposition head. These lasers improve energy absorption and printing efficiency across the metal spectrum and open up new material possibilities while reducing the carbon footprint for production.

The Meltio engineers have also managed to improve the energy distribution and wire guidance such that the deposition head is aligned from the factory and not operator-adjustable leading to consistent output and vastly reduced maintenance. Lastly, the head is laden with new and improved sensor solutions for monitoring the printing process, which makes printing more reliable.

Expert Committee Participation in the 3DPI Awards 2024

In addition to public nominations, the awards incorporate insights from an Expert Committee comprising seasoned professionals with nearly 2,000 years of combined experience in additive manufacturing. This committee collaborates with the public to curate shortlists and select winners, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation process.

Michael Petch, editor-in-chief of the 3D Printing Industry, explained, “The 3DPI Awards are the largest annual survey of the state of the 3D printing industry. Leading indicators, such as the number of start-ups and nominations received in related categories, such as innovation, exceeded previous years, an encouraging yard-stick to judge the industry’s health.”

Highlights from the 2024 3D Printing Industry Awards Shortlists

The shortlists include applications using metal additive manufacturing (AM), such as SpaceX’s Raptor 3 engine and 6K, which tackle the question of circularity and supply chain resilience for critical metals. AM’s application for hypersonic flight and NASA’s rotating detonation engine are highlighted.

The 3DPI Awards celebrates individuals who foster communities and advance the industry, for example, Kimberly Gibson of America Makes, promoting public-private collaboration to strengthen the additive manufacturing ecosystem. Or, Teula Bradshaw of the Sanjay Mortimer Foundation who supports educational access to 3D printing resources, empowering neurodiverse future engineers and makers.

Innovations of the year include Xolo Volumetric Printing, which uses a groundbreaking printing method that constructs entire objects simultaneously, enhancing print speed and enabling complex, uniform structures. Start-up nominee 3D Architech Inc is pioneering a gel-based metal 3D printing process that enables micron-level precision, cost-effective production, and advanced cooling designs, impacting applications from heat sinks to clean energy.

“The winners will receive not only the acclaim of the industry, but a unique 3D printing trophy made from metal and polymers by our manufacturing partners Desktop Metal and 3DPRINTUK. The winning design is selected from a competition hosted by Printables by Prusa Research and featuring their community of highly talented designers,” said Michael Petch.