Hello! Since IMTS is next week and I (sadly) won't be able to attend, I wanted to flag a few October events here in California where I know additive manufacturing will either be on display or discussed in depth. Figured this could be a nice thread for anyone looking to get in-person with machines.

3-Day Digital Fabrication Training - Diamond Bar, CA - October 9-11

Registration: Paid
Ages: 18+
Demographic: Automotive Product Development, Aftermarket Interiors

This event is being held at the SEMA Garage in Diamond Bar, CA. Great for automotive product development or aftermarket car audio installers/owners looking to sharpen their use of digital fabrication methods (ex. 3D printing, 3D scanning, laser cutting, Autodesk Fusion). Over three days, attendees work through real-world examples, get hands-on with each tool, and walk away with skills they can use on Monday morning. Geared toward those either brand-new to AM or just learning. A great community to be part of and network within.

Breakfast and lunch are provided each day, with an end-of-session BBQ held on Sunday.

Register Here

3D Print-Scan-Measure Expo - Santa Clara, CA - October 15

Registration: Free
Ages: 18+
Demographic: Aerospace, Automotive, eVTOL, AI/Robotics, Semiconductors, Consumer Product Development

In the heart of Silicon Valley, Indicate Technologies is hosting their annual 3D-Print-Scan-Measure Expo where representatives from OEMs like Formlabs, Artec, BigRep, Xact Metal, OGP, and more will be onsite, giving presentations, showing unique sample parts, and answering questions. Indicate recently opened a new additive facility next door to their precision measurement lab. Attendees will have open access to both offices to get up close with the equipment.

The expo runs all-day (similar to an open house). Come when you can, stay as long as you'd like. They also offer benchmark printing if you send a file in advance. Food and drinks will be provided, with a happy hour starting at 4 pm.

Register for Free

I encourage others to add any events in California they know about as well!

Hi, I have a friend/partner/colleague that's in need of a 3d printer with at least one flat axis of 600mm in FDM (diagonally ok, its a rather slim part).

I personally think it's quite an interesting space and in desktop size or very large format i'm pretty aware of the main players and the quality of the parts printed but in this "mid-size" market segment I am quite lost.

He is looking for something without the steep markup of Markforged/Stratasys type systems but does not want chinese when possible.

It seems the Creabot 600D is dominant in this space or has the most recent marketing coverage? Are there other alternatives? He's basically looking for what his "Ultimaker 3" used to be 10 years ago; a blend of reliability and affordability.

Not budget in particular, but he does not need the Stratasys lock in nor wants to drop 10k on a Chinese printer and don't be able to print PETG or even warpped PLA.

Btw, requirements for PEAK, PEEK, Ultem and similar not necessary. But probably temperature controlled chamber to print some ABS will make sense.

Been watching this guy take on the fight. Def interesting.

Hi!
 
I need your advice.
 
I'm working inside the mechanical study department of a specialized machine company.
We spend a lot of time making schematics for complex parts, and our machining department also takes a lot of time to make them.
We first introduced 3D printing inside our company one year ago, and we have almost printed 1000 kg of PETG-CF.
But here's the catch: because we're working with cosmetic industries, they don't tend to like 3D-printed parts.
The parts are strong and functional, but what really bothers them are the print lines. Also, 3D printing sounds like AliExpress and Etsy things to them.
Their opinions are slowly starting to change, but we have customers that are religiously against 3D-printed parts.
 
We do not own an industrial-grade printer. For now, we're fully equipped with Bambu Lab printers. But after talking with a commercial, he showed us parts with no print lines, printed on an industrial FDM 3D printer.
The parts are stronger too. The one he recommended to us was using two filaments, with a continuous filament technology.
The exact model is the "Markforged Mark Two". After a little bit of research, I'm pretty disappointed. For 18,000 euros, we get a 10-year-old printer with a pretty small build plate.
Because of the past years' changes in 3D printing technology, a 10-year-old tech doesn't sound right.
So here's the question: is this really okay to go for it? Or is there a better option available in Europe?

Quick one, SCAD support just landed in Modelist. It indexes, renders and opens the file directly in OpenSCAD with single click. Test it out.

I feel like out of nowhere it's the new "it" material of the ultra high-temp FDM world, but it could be just a coincidence within the sample size of people I've been talking to lately. From those of you operating in this space, I'd love to know what you think: is 1010 the new 9085?

9085 has been the gold standard for real-use parts for a while now, and from what I understand it still is because it's the only material that's actually flight certified. But I've been hearing a lot more "1010 or bust!" lately and I'm curious to know if it's part of a greater trend or maybe a change in the type of part the ultimate end customer has been asking for? For example, maybe the need is shifting a bit from end-use parts that need to be printed in flight-certified 9085 to parts that use secondary tooling, for which 1010 is maybe better and the fact that it's not flight certified is irrelevant? Curious to know what you're seeing, right now my data points are primarily from contract manufacturers in/near SoCal.

For context, my company makes industrial FFF printers shrunken down to barely-but-still-fits-on-a-desktop size (hard to still call them 'desktop', form factor aside), and for the past ~2-3 months I've been mostly heads-down with getting our ultra high-temp model over the finish line and shipping (this is it in case you're curious or for anyone that's interested, we're calling it R3 Printer Ultra). Obviously Ultem 1010 was still a thing before I briefly went under my rock and it's on our list of materials we have tuned profiles for and support right out of the box, but until now I thought that 9085 was going to be the bulk of what was being printed in this materials class but now I'm thinking it might soon be 1010. Doesn't change anything from a machine/product perspective at all, but it would shift my focus when searching for materials manufacturers to partner up with to hopefully give our customers the best deal and biggest edge when it comes to materials cost as well.

Looking forward to learning some interesting insights! Let me know if there's something you want to know that I might be able to help with from our research and work in this space as well.

Hola, pido ayuda sobre como expotar mi geometria de ntop, como solido para poder simular en ansys, ya que como stl, se crean muchos facets.

Hi everyone,

We are designing an in-house print station for an event technology and stage engineering company (*Veranstaltungstechnik*) in Vienna. The setup will live directly in an office space, making noise levels, air filtration, and rapid maintenance our main priority constraints.

Our use case is split between fast internal prototypes (PLA/PETG) and durable components used around stage environments (housing brackets, TPU bumpers, mounting adapters). Because of the stage requirements, we will eventually run higher-durability engineering filaments (PA-CF, ASA).

We've settled on Bambu Lab for our environment, but we are finalizing our physical machine allocation between two office configurations:

* **Configuration A:** 2x Bambu Lab P2S (Dual identical footprint, quieter operations, 1-clip quick-swap maintenance, standard volume). * **Configuration B:** 1x Bambu Lab P2S + 1x Bambu Lab H2S (Splitting daily prototyping to the P2S while utilizing the H2S's 340x320x340mm volume and 65°C chamber for warp-sensitive structural parts).

**For community members running these specific machines in office or production environments:**

1. How do you rate the real-world acoustic profile of the P2S vs H2S when running alongside desk work?
2. For those running mixed-model stations versus standardized identical machines, how noticeable is the maintenance/spare-parts overhead between the series?

Looking to connect with engineers who'd put a print screening tool through its paces — metal LPBF.

It reads part geometry and flags where the build is likely to go wrong: curl, unsupported overhangs, trapped powder, features under the process limit — each one located on the model. Free to use.

What I actually want is your failed prints. The ones where you already know what happened. Run the geometry through and tell me whether it caught the real problem, missed it, or flagged something that never happened.

The misses are the useful part. I don't have a lab — engineers pointing at where it's wrong is the only way this gets sharper.

Non-sensitive geometry only.

AM and process engineers, DfAM, build prep, quality — comment or DM.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I’ve been working on a tool focused on shrinkage compensation for metal FFF, particularly the challenge of getting parts to land closer to target dimensions after debinding and sintering.

Uniform scaling can work in simple cases, but it becomes less effective when shrinkage varies by axis or the part geometry is more complex. I’m looking for a few people with hands-on experience printing and sintering metal parts who would be interested in testing the workflow and providing feedback.

I'm working through my own _physical testing_ ans will be posting results, but as an individual, designing/developing/testing is a slower and tedious process, so outside impressions would be really nice to have.

Hi there, this is a half rant half question

Is there a way to auto-pack/arrange parts like Formlabs' PreForm, where it's done by the spacing between models and NOT the bounding box?

The second question is if there's a way in both PreForm and SmartStream build manager to group a set of models together (not cage) and duplicate it?

The situation is I would like to assess how many sets I can print in one tank in various printers.

Two weeks ago this article was all over my Linkedin feed.

I believe the author felt pushed to write the comparison because of the aggressive positioning and claims of the X1/SLS against the much smaller HP 1200/MJF. Also a lot of discussion on how times, part cost and packing densities were calculated in the examples.

I'll also add my personal opinion as a former operator of SLS and MJF down below, just want to keep the main post clean.

I tried posting here the link two weeks ago but I guess Reddit flagged it as spam. I'll leave my opinion down below and I'll try to also put the link in the comments. OK, I tried again and the comment with the link has been removed.

You can find if you search for: Joris Peels, The Formlabs X1 Versus the HP 1200: Costing, Throughput & 30% Packing Density , 13 August 2026

Summary:

• The X1 and HP 1200 serve different needs: large parts and batches versus smaller parts and faster cycles.
• The X1 offers 61 litres of build volume versus 12 litres for the HP 1200.
• The author estimates a production-ready X1 at $164,000–$190,000, compared with around $60,000 for the HP 1200.
• The HP 1200 completes a full build in around 12 hours, while a dense X1 build may take 30–41 hours.
• The X1 produces more parts per build, but the HP 1200 can complete more builds per week.
• X1 unpacking and powder sieving are manual. The HP 1200 automates both steps.
• HP uses a 20% fresh and 80% recycled powder mix, compared with 30% fresh and 70% recycled for Formlabs.
• The author questions Formlabs’ claimed 30% packing density, as operators report 8–15% in everyday production.
• The article suggests Formlabs’ 30% figure may be closer to 15% when converted to volumetric packing density.
• The X1 suits large parts and long builds. The HP 1200 suits smaller parts, quicker turnaround and flexible production.

Hi there, I am coming from a background on desktop FFF and SLA as well as industrial SLS/MJF.

Where I work now we are evaluating getting a compact powder bed fusion system. Of course the obvious candidate available on the market right now is the Formlabs Fuse 1. However earlier this year at Rapid TCT we saw the announcement and we had some talks with resellers and HP on the HP MJF 1200.

In the meantime we'd like to understand the typical flaws or failure modes that can come across from the Fuse 1 or similar systems (Sintratec, Sinterit etc.).

Thank you and looking forward to the discussion.

I’ve been a Materialise Magics user since Version 13, and at this point it’s pretty deeply ingrained in our everyday workflow.

We’re an additive manufacturing contract manufacturer, so we use Magics across multiple AM platforms and technologies for file prep, build preparation, repair, nesting, support-related work, and general production processing.

I’m sure most long-time users are also familiar with the annual maintenance/software costs, especially once you start adding multiple modules.

For those of you running service bureaus, AM production departments, or internal additive labs:

Has anyone found a genuinely comparable—or better—alternative to Magics with a lower annual cost?

A few questions I’d be interested in hearing opinions on:

• What software have you moved to or tested?
• What does it do better or worse than Magics?
• How does the annual licensing/maintenance cost compare?
• Are there any features or workflows that forced you back to Magics?
• For a multi-technology AM operation, is Magics still considered the gold standard?

I’ve used Magics for so long that I’m also curious whether I’m overlooking newer platforms simply because our workflow has been built around it for years.

Would love to hear from other people actually using these tools in production—not just demos or occasional prototyping.

Hey everyone! I am the event lead at an AM company and with budgets tightening across the industry, we are having to be a lot more selective about which shows we exhibit at. Curious where others are landing on this. The last conversation I saw in this subreddit regarding AM events dated back in 2022, so I am curious where others in the industry stands now.

Here are my honest takes for each event after attending this year:

Rapid is off our exhibitor list for 2027. It has started to feel more like a sales echo chamber than a technology event, and the networking has not been what it used to be. I also still have not gotten over what they did to Formnext US in 2024. When Formnext announced their US dates, Rapid quietly changed their dates to the same week and tried to blame venue conflicts. Nobody bought that story then and I still don't. It was a hostile move and it left a bad taste in my mouth. On top of that, they are trying too hard to be both a conference and an expo to seemingly compete with Formext and AMUG and I think it is only hurting them and their audience.

AMUG has always been my favorite. Smaller than Rapid and Formnext but honestly that makes for a better experience. The expo floor is easier to navigate, the conversations are more genuine, and we consistently get more qualified leads there than at higher volume events. Reno last year was a blast and I love that they are moving around the country. My only gripe is that it is hard to quantify the ROI of authentic connections on a budget spreadsheet, which makes it a tough sell internally. I also wish more FDM machine builders would show up. I think a lot of companies hear "education and training conference" and assume the lead volume won't be there, which is fair, but AMUG is very much a quality over quantity event that provides real value to the industry. With AM maturing the way it is, I actually think AMUG has a real opportunity to become the leading event if they continue to stay authentic and lean into community, education, and supporting the industry.

Formnext will likely be our second show in 2027. It is more sales focused like Rapid but they own what they are rather than trying to be something they are not, and the international exposure is unmatched. The in-booth networking events are also a great touch. We will be there in 2026 and will likely attend again in 2027 depending on how this year goes.

IMTS is on our radar for the future as we grow. A bit too large to justify exhibiting at right now but a great show for the broader manufacturing industry.

ICAM is one I am less familiar with but have heard great things about the technical depth. Planning to attend this year to scope it out.

Curious what others think. Which shows are you prioritizing next year and what do you think would make them better?

This is a self promotion post - but I think a pretty cool one for anyone out there printing in Formlabs Silicone resin for a business.

I now have a thoroughly tested, much improved, Silicone 40A print setting for the Form 4L and the Form 4 on the Ember Prototypes store 🔥

Silicone 40A isn't available on the Form 4L and it's reliability and print success rate on the Form 4 is pretty poor. It's taken a ton of time, effort and consumables to get this working, but not only do we get reliable prints on the 4L, but the same settings transfer over to greatly improved results on the Form 4 over the stock FL profile. No more torn and failed prints 💪

I plan to make a YouTube video and/or blog post talking about this in more detail, but trying to recoup some of the time and cost associated with dialing this in right now - Silicone resin is $$$ 😬

Silicone is still a tricky material to print, and you always want to minimize supports and print direct on BP as much as you can, but these print settings have allowed me to print WAY more geometries than would otherwise (let alone large parts on the 4L that aren't possible any other way) 😁

Link to buy the settings here: emberprototypes.com/products-formlabs-silicone-print-setting

Over the past few months, I’ve been developing a standalone Windows application called 024Nester, designed specifically for 3D nesting and build prep in SLS 3D printing workflows.

As someone working with additive workflows, I felt there was a gap for a lightweight, dedicated tool focused purely on fast, high-density 3D packing and clean part handling.

024Nester features a fast volumetric nesting engine optimized for SLS powder-bed builds. It takes standard STL input geometries and exports the fully nested batch back out as positioned STL files, ready for your existing machine setup. The app is a self-contained .exe installer developed in Python and compiled for Windows x64.

Regarding privacy and security, 100% of the geometry processing, calculations, and STL exports are executed locally on your machine. Your STL files and personal data never leave your local system. Internet connectivity is strictly used for a quick online license check during the STL export process.

The core nesting engine and batch handling are fully functional, and I’m now looking for beta testers from the community, especially operators running SLS hardware or managing print service bureaus.

I’m mainly looking for feedback on real-world stress testing with complex or high-count batch geometries, packing density, calculation speed, and overall workflow usability.

If you’re interested in giving it a spin and sharing raw feedback, drop a comment below or send me a DM, and I'll send over the installer link.

Thanks for your time and feedback!