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Two companies are making a coordinated push to move lithography-based metal manufacturing out of the research lab and onto the factory floor. During AMA Healthcare 2025, Dr. Gerald Mitteramskogler, CEO and founder of Vienna-based Incus GmbH, and Dr. Lucas Vogel, CEO, MetShape GmbH, presented the case for why their shared technology is gaining ground in medical devices, dental products, and precision engineering, and why small, complex metal parts represent the segment where they believe it holds a decisive advantage over competing processes.
LMM works by curing a metal powder-filled resin layer by layer using a projector, then removing the binder and sintering the part to near-full density. The process offers a production-ready route to high-complexity metal components that neither Metal Injection Molding nor other additive technologies handle effectively at small scale.
The data points both presented: three times MIM throughput on dental brackets, cost reductions of up to tenfold on surgical device components, and a development pipeline targeting two million parts per year on just two printers, indicate a technology advancing faster than broader industry awareness currently reflects.
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A Process Built Around Precision
Lithography-based Metal Manufacturing borrows the optical mechanics of stereolithography but applies them to a metal-loaded photopolymer resin, roughly 55 percent metal powder by volume, that is solid at room temperature, liquified layer by layer by a heated recoating blade, and then cured by a projector from above. The result is a green part held together by the binder, which later undergoes debinding and sintering to reach final density.
Mitteramskogler has spent his career at the intersection of photopolymerization and metal manufacturing. One characteristic defines the process more than any other: green parts require no support structures. The material acts as its own support medium during the build, which has direct consequences for surface quality and geometric complexity. “We can create green parts that are basically unmatched in terms of quality, complexity, and surface aesthetics for metal additive manufacturing,” he said. drawing a deliberate parallel to the surface fidelity polymer stereolithography has long been known for.
The powders used carry a D50 in the 8 to 12-micron range, consistent with MIM feedstocks, though Incus has worked with particles as small as 4 to 6 microns when applications demand it. The 45 volume percent shrinkage that accompanies binder removal is predictable and isotropic, meaning it can be compensated at the design stage rather than corrected after the fact.
Mitteramskogler was direct about where the real engineering challenge sits: “It’s not always the printing process that’s the most challenging part, it’s really designing your part for sintering and knowing what to do in sintering.”
The Machine Lineup and Where the Economics Land
Incus offers two machine classes aimed at different points on the production curve. The Hammer Evo, with a 89.6 × 56 mm build platform, is designed for prototyping and small-scale manufacturing runs, a starting point for teams validating the technology or producing low volumes of complex parts.
The Hammer Pro line scales the build area to 200 × 204.55 mm, and is not intended for producing single large components. The point is to densely populate each platform with small parts, running more pieces through each debinding and sintering cycle, and driving down per-unit cost in the process.
Mitteramskogler put the Hammer Pro at roughly seven times more cost-efficient per part than the Evo, purely as a function of platform utilization. “Basically, being able to fit more parts on a single platform makes the whole process chain more economic,” he explained, an argument that becomes more compelling as volumes grow, without requiring new tooling or process re-qualification.
The production environment also differs markedly from laser-based metal AM. There is no loose powder handling, no high-power laser equipment, and no inert atmosphere requirement during the build stage, lowering the barrier to entry for organizations without dedicated metal AM infrastructure. Whatever unused resin remains after a print job can be fully recirculated, with unrecoverable losses estimated at roughly one percent, residual material clinging to green parts during extraction.
MetShape: Application Development at Scale
MetShape, a spin-off from Pforzheim University, operates as the manufacturing service and application development counterpart to Incus’s system business.
The company supports customers across the full development arc, from feasibility validation and prototype iteration through to production at target quantities. Vogel was clear that the range is wider than most assume. At the lower end, teams come to test whether LMM is the right process for their part at all. At the upper end, the quantities rival what injection molding is typically reserved for.
“We are currently developing a project where we are aiming at a quantity of 2 million pieces per year, which should be able to be manufactured on just two printers,” he noted.
The cost-efficiency threshold he cited for production use cases is a roughly 2-centimeter cube. Parts within that envelope allow the build platform to be densely populated and keep the process chain compact enough to be economically viable.
Within those bounds, MetShape has demonstrated surface finishes around 2 micrometers Ra without post-processing, internal threads down to M1.5 directly from the sintered state, and dimensional tolerances below 0.5 percent of target, with debinding and sintering completing in 24 hours or less for most part geometries.
Medical Devices, Dental Brackets, and Superelastic Alloys
Two publicly disclosed cases anchored the medical portion of the presentation. The first involves a colorectal anastomosis device developed by Dutch company Implican under a EU-funded Eurostars Project. The functional head, which must align, compress, and cut bowel tissue in a single-use surgical procedure, contains multiple precision metal components that MetShape manufactures. Cost reductions against conventional routes range from six- to tenfold depending on the component, with first-in-human studies expected in 2026.
The second case concerns dental brackets, where LMM’s throughput advantage is most clearly quantifiable. A standard orthodontic treatment requires around 18 bracket geometries. MIM produces these on two-piece molds with cycle times around 30 seconds, yielding approximately 360 parts per hour.
On the Hammer Pro, MetShape has demonstrated throughput close to three times that figure, while retaining the geometric freedom to introduce new bracket profiles into a build job without any tooling investment. “We can use the same materials and the same process to scale up to high volume and also start with the initial design iterations,” Vogel said, summarizing the flexibility that makes the argument difficult to dismiss in a market where unit prices are already tightly compressed.
On the R&D side, Nickel Titanium has become a focus area for both companies. Vogel presented footage of a sintered component recovering its original geometry after deformation, a demonstration of the pseudo-elastic behavior that makes the alloy relevant for minimally invasive surgical tools and actuators. “The pseudo-elastic properties are quite interesting for various applications,” he said, adding that MetShape supports customers through both component development and manufacturing for these more demanding material systems.
Looking ahead, the roadmap for LMM is being written as much by its customers as by the companies behind it. “We see more and more traction with our customers,” Vogel said, “and we’re happy that it’s developing so fast.” Both speakers agreed the ceiling is set not by the printer but by how well teams command sintering behavior, material selection, and design for manufacturability, and that the most compelling evidence of progress remains, for now, confidential.
Metal AM: From Lab to Clinical-Grade Parts
The gap LMM is targeting is one the broader metal additive manufacturing industry has long struggled to close: moving from demonstrating what a process can do in controlled conditions to delivering consistent, cost-justified output at clinical volumes. For Incus and MetShape, the strategy is built around vertical specialization to compress the distance between prototype and production-ready components at small scale, where most competing technologies lose their economic case.
In 2021, AM Ventures backed MetShape’s expansion with seed financing specifically on the thesis that sinter-based two-step processes are becoming increasingly important for producing larger quantities of metal components, and that mastering the sintering stage is the key differentiator.
These signals point in the same direction: LMM is no longer being evaluated as a research-stage technology. The question now is how fast it can be qualified for the applications where precision, part complexity, and cost-per-unit converge.
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