AM Forum Berlin 2026: Tough Love From BMW’s Timo – 3DPrint.com

We’re once again in the lovely city of Berlin, at the absolutely immense Estrel Center. The congress center, a musical and theater venue, towers over the easternmost reaches of the Neukölln neighborhood. The angular glass of the, undoubtedly ugly, building houses over 1,100 hotel rooms. The AM Forum venue within is lovely, well-appointed, and somehow intimate in such a huge building. Here we have one conference room with about 500 or so atendees. 

Most people are from Germany or the immediately surrounding countries. AM Forum is a great show. It’s a wonderful opportunity to interface with the German Additive Manufacturing community as well. It’s a serious AM practitioner show where you can have good discussions with a good group of people. It’s always extremely well organized and managed. Every year, we find new speakers that we love interviewing or learning more about. The show is great at finding people who are managing the technical and managerial aspects of implementing AM and letting them tell their stories. The show also gets you people that other shows never find.

This year, we hear from Piotr Motyka, the Head of AM at pharma giant Roche; Dr. Steffen Beyer, Manager of Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing (CSAM) at European rocket launch company ArianeGroup (equally owned by Airbus and Safran); and Dr. Jürgen Kraus, Director of Additive Manufacturing at MTU Aero Engines. Pharma people don’t usually come to 3D printing shows. And rocket people? Sure, we’ve heard from lots of them, but not many Ariane people. And a rocket person talking about cold spray? Never. And MTU is an early pioneer in additive manufacturing, doing amazing things. AM Forum is great at finding folks like that, people you really learn from.

The networking event is always super good as well, putting the region in one very nice room. This year, it was in a sky bar overlooking all of Berlin. There we had drinks, met people, while Franziska Giffey, Mayor of Berlin and Senator for Economic Affairs, Energy and Public Enterprises, together with David Hampel, Head of Unit Manufacturing Industries, Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie, opened the event while they spoke from a DJ booth that was raised into the bar.

The show was opened by Daniel Wäldchen, a member of IPM’s executive board. After this, Dr. Onur Yüce Gün turned to footwear, showing what New Balance has been doing. He spoke of simulation-driven design, telling us that “simulation is never reality,” before discussing the creatures, meshes, and structures he and his teams have created. He also shared some of the expectations around AI and design. He zoomed in on making just parts or the whole shoe. He showed us a heel part of a shoe. Should we look at this as an integrated whole or a set of discrete parts? He makes the excellent point that, “How you draw the shoe, changes what it becomes.” He then went to face normals and the inside and outside of a part. His point is that we don’t understand, and AI doesn’t understand. His last point is that, amidst all of the exciting developments, the search is for meaning. 

Then, Materialise‘s Brigitte De Vet-Viethen spoke about smart software and partnerships. Brigitte really believes that partners working together is the infrastructure for making 3D printing a reality. When she looks at scaling, she says that hardware innovation has been one of the key factors enabling the industry’s scaling so far. She believes that we need both affordable machines and high-end machines capable of making large, complex parts. She spoke of interchanging information, standardization, and working together. She then mentioned their aim to enable people to work together more efficiently. 

Then we heard from Timo Göbel, the General Manager of Additive Manufacturing at the BMW Group. He talked about additive manufacturing reducing millions of euros in tooling costs. He said that the new i3 has two 3D printed parts in it, but only during the ramp-up. For mass production, 3D printing did not make it into the new car. The next stage at BWM is about industrializing AM to the next level. He shared that in 2012 they produced their first series of polymer 3D printed parts, and in 2017 they produced their first series of metal 3D printed parts. He talked about BMW using 3D printing in the Rolls-Royce Phantom, pioneering the use there. At Rolls-Royce, every car has at least 10 3D printed parts, he told us. He looked at their automated sand core 3D printing, which produced 4,500 sand cores each day. He explained that 3D printing companies will no longer use the razor-and-blades business model. Pointing out that “you need to move away from razor and blades…you need an open material model for production.” This is an excellent point.

Timo also said that we do not need to reinvent automation; there are plenty of firms that can do this. We should integrate into existing automation systems or with companies. He also told us to reduce maintenance costs. We should also integrate with existing software systems. In just two minutes, Timo made the most succinct plea to really industrialize AM. If you take nothing away from this meeting, please just keep the above image as your desktop background. Timo went on to explain how they’re growing, in WAAM and MJF as well. He said, “No one will pay more to use AM because it is nice.” And stated that BMW can quickly integrate and scale technologies. But he needs “open materials systems with a focus on low costs.” The executive added that we need automation, high productivity, robust operational reliability and costs at scale.

I believe this is the most important presentation I’ve seen in the past 5 years. This is exactly what we need to do in order to grow. I’m sure that the rest of the AM Forum will be great, but for me, Timo’s presentation more than made my trip to Berlin worthwhile. This is the kind of tough love and growth path that we need for the future.

Images courtesy of 3DPrint.com

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