The VoxelMatters Podcast

Gianni Zitelli did not wait for the dust to settle at Axtra 3D’s newly opened European headquarters in Vicenza before sitting down for a conversation. The 1,600-square-meter facility—a standalone building housing material validation, application development, manufacturing, and customer support—had just opened its doors when VoxelMatters caught up with the company’s co-founder and CEO, samples in hand and the energy of a launch event still in the room.

The company turned five in April. What began as a friends-and-family seed round in May 2021 has grown into a multinational operation with two facilities, more than 60 installations worldwide, and a repeat customer rate that Zitelli cited as the clearest measure of the company’s health.

Listen to VoxelMatters exclusive interview with Gianni Zitelli, Co-founder & CEO of Axtra 3D.

At its recent media day, HP marked 10 years since it first showed the world Multi Jet Fusion, the powder bed fusion technology that became the foundation of its 3D printing business. VoxelMatters sat down separately with Alex Monino, SVP and GM of Additive Manufacturing Solutions at HP, who joined the 3D printing effort in 2013 and has run the commercial side of it since. The conversation traces the arc from a blank sheet of paper in the early 2010s to a business Monino said is now growing at 25 percent and to the launch of the HP 1200, the company's newest and most accessible MJF system.

Additive manufacturing has spent the past decade trying to prove itself worthy of a rocket engine. When a small startup out of Colorado decided to build its very first rocket engine almost entirely out of 3D printed parts, a lot of people in the industry assumed it wouldn't hold up.

Eleven years later, that company is Ursa Major, and the engine — Hadley — has flown more than ten hypersonic missions. It comes back. It gets inspected. It flies again. That track record is now the foundation for a rapidly expanding portfolio: Draper, a storable version of that same engine that just powered a supersonic flight demonstration for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in January; a solid rocket motor program built around a manufacturing approach the company calls Lynx, designed to print motors of wildly different sizes on the same equipment instead of building a new production line every time the requirement changes; and a fast-growing customer list that now includes Stratolaunch and Sirius Technologies. Along the way, Ursa Major closed a $100 million Series E funding round, broke ground on a new solid rocket motor test site in Colorado, expanded its 3D printing fleet with EOS, and helped found an alliance aimed at rebuilding America's additive manufacturing supply chain for defense.

Behind all of that is a surprisingly small team. Our guest today, Tom Pomorski, is Ursa Major's Director of Additive Manufacturing, and he joined the company five years ago to build its in-house additive program essentially from nothing — a handful of machines and a couple of engineers in Youngstown, Ohio. Today that program runs nine metal printers and fourteen people, and Pomorski has watched it grow alongside some of the most demanding flight qualification work happening anywhere in the industry right now.

In this conversation, Tom takes us inside how that program actually works — why Ursa Major's entire design process was built around additive manufacturing from day one rather than bolted on afterward, and why he thinks the industry's trust problem with 3D printing has always been more about education than about the parts themselves. We get into the details of Ursa Major's partnership with EOS, including how the company helped unlock custom scan-path software that's now available industry-wide, and what Tom calls physics-based qualification — an approach designed to validate a process once and apply it broadly, rather than requalifying every single part from scratch. We also talk about where artificial intelligence is already showing up on Ursa Major's shop floor, the materials driving their solid rocket motor and liquid engine programs, and Tom's candid take on what it would actually take—in terms of cost, openness, and machine architecture—for metal additive manufacturing to scale the way plastic printing did.

It's a rare, detailed look inside how one of the most closely watched propulsion companies in the country actually builds its engines. Here's my conversation with Tom Pomorski, Director of Additive Manufacturing at Ursa Major.

Welcome back to the VoxelMatters Podcast—where we shine a light on the people, the technologies, and the big ideas driving the world of additive manufacturing forward. I’m your host, Davide Sher, and today, we’re diving into a story that truly glows with innovation.

Imagine a world where your lighting fixture isn’t mass-produced in a distant factory, shipped halfway around the world, and sitting in a warehouse for months before reaching you—but instead, is 3D printed on demand, near you, for you, and made largely from recycled materials.

That world isn’t coming—it’s already here.

In this exclusive episode, we sit down with Bart Maeyens, Leader of 3D Printing at Signify—the company you might remember as Philips Lighting—to explore how Signify has turned the dream of distributed manufacturing into a global reality.

With over 3.5 million 3D printed luminaires produced across five continents, Signify isn’t just rethinking how we light our homes, workplaces, and cities—it’s reimagining how products are designed, made, and delivered. From the company’s myCreation platform, which lets customers design custom fixtures online, to its automated global printing network that sends digital files to the nearest production hub, this is a masterclass in sustainability and smart manufacturing.

Bart takes us behind the scenes of this transformation—from the early question that started it all, “Can we actually leverage 3D printing to volume?”, to the moment Signify realized that additive could do more than prototype—it could produce.

We’ll explore how the company is using waste materials to create beautiful, functional lighting, how its circular manufacturing model is reducing CO₂ by up to 30%, and why Bart believes we’re entering a decade where “the global economy won’t be as global”—a decade where local, digital production just makes sense.

And of course, we’ll talk about what’s next: the upcoming “Titan” platform that’s set to redefine the boundaries of design and performance in 3D printed lighting.

So grab your headphones, adjust your brightness settings, and get ready to see how Signify is illuminating the future—one layer at a time.

Get ready for an electrifying start to the new season of the VoxelMatters Podcast!

In 2024, we're diving headfirst into the boundless world of additive manufacturing, exploring an array of applications spanning industries, materials, and parts.

To kick off this journey, we've got an extraordinary story to share with you. Brace yourselves for a game-changing narrative about a company that's not just redesigning parts for AM but reimagining them – through code!

Meet LEAP 71, the pioneers of a revolutionary computational engineering approach to part design. They aren't just transforming the way we create some of the world's most cutting-edge products; they're also shaping the future of 3D printing, making it an indispensable cornerstone of tomorrow's manufacturing.

LEAP 71 has wowed us with their mind-boggling creations, working with industry giants like AMCM and the Fraunhofer Institute. While we've heard about parametric and generational design for at least a decade, LEAP 71 has taken a quantum "leap" beyond existing 3D design software.

In this episode, we sit down with the masterminds behind LEAP 71, who also happen to constitute the company’s entire workforce: Josephine Lissner and Lin Kayser. Together, we unravel how they're harnessing software algorithms to craft the next era of exceptionally complex physical products.

Some might not have realized it yet, but creating 3D models—whether for virtual worlds like gaming or for physical use in 3D printing—has recently become a heck of a lot more accessible. This shift is driven by a new wave of AI applications, like Tripo 3D, that can transform text prompts or 2D images into fully developed 3D models.

VAST, the company behind Tripo, emerged from an open-source collaboration among AI and 3D engineers blending virtual and physical 3D worlds.

In this episode of the VoxelMatters Podcast, Founder Simon Song tells us how he is making 3D printing truly ubiquitous.

Robert Higham, Director of AMS, explains how he’s working with Rolls-Royce to transform old Tornado parts into components for the new Tempest fighter, opening a world of opportunities for the Royal Air Force and beyond.

Our guest for this new episode of the VoxelMatters podcast is Jonathan Myer, CEO of APWORKS.

As an engineering company, Munich-based APWORKS has been at the forefront of advanced additive manufacturing for state-of-the-art materials – such as the increasingly popular Scalmalloy, which it brought to market - and applications used in motorsports and aerosapce, since it spun out of Airbus in 2016.

First as Chief Product Officer and now as CEO, Myer has responsibility for product strategy and implementation.

Before joining APWORKS he spent over a decade as Technology Roadmap Owner for Additive Manufacturing at AIRBUS, with responsibility for defining the AM technology strategy at the group level.  

Today APWORKS makes proven aerospace technologies accessible in many different industries. Focusing on metal PBF, the company covers the entire value chain, from optimized component and part design to the choice of

suitable materials, from prototyping to qualified serial production.

We now have the opportunity speak with Jonathan about very latest progress at APWORKS, including the new Genome toolset, which helps customers rapidly implement AM where it makes the most sense, and more generally to discuss about how AM is impacting the aerospace segment today and how it will continue to do so in the years to come.

In today's tech landscape, AI and manufacturing present great opportunities. Randy Altschuler, the founder of Xometry, a digital AI-driven manufacturing company, discusses its motivations, challenges, and prospects. Altschuler was inspired by the importance and potential of manufacturing and saw the opportunity to bridge the gap in the market using digital tools and AI.

One challenge is the lack of awareness about additive manufacturing (AM), which limits industry growth. Increasing awareness and education about AM is crucial for unlocking its full potential. Despite slower growth, the industry is progressing steadily, driven by education and awareness. Integrating AM education from an early age can equip future engineers to utilize these technologies effectively. Additive manufacturing has great allure. AM's automation capabilities make it attractive for reshoring production by countering labor cost advantages in overseas manufacturing.

Xometry creates localized manufacturing marketplaces in multiple languages to enhance resiliency. Their use of machine learning optimizes capacity and offers tailored solutions for customers. Randy envisions expanding the scope of AM, as Xometry becomes a global brand and redefines the manufacturing landscape to make advanced solutions accessible worldwide.

Mass production is the Eldorado of additive manufacturing. It is not easy to achieve and very few companies have been able to cost-effectively produce thousands and even millions of parts using AM technology.

One of these companies is OECHSLER, a major manufacturer of polymer (and ceramic) parts for various key industries, including automotive and sportswear. The German company achieved several

Now, under the leadership of Andreas Knoechel, Head of Program Management Additive Manufacturing, the company is going to the next level, targeting “lot size one” and highly customized products.

These include INSOLO, a 3D printed insole for the orthopedic market (and beyond), as well as multiple bike saddles. In addition, the company recently launched an advanced Online Ordering Platform, which empowers clients to place orders for 3D printed parts quickly and redefines the landscape of manufacturing by combining technology and convenience.

*The content has been edited for smoother flow and to remove pauses and filler words.