Netherlands-based deep science and engineering company Motion Imager has partnered with the Mechanics of Materials and Processing and Performance groups at Eindhoven University of Technology to accelerate volumetric AM from research-stage innovation to scalable production.
The initiative secured significant backing through a competitive selection run by the Materials Innovation Institute and Holland HighTech, which highlighted the technology’s potential to reshape advanced manufacturing.
Aligning Materials Design with Manufacturing
The team is developing manufacturing methods that achieve repeatable, production-ready quality by combining new scientific discoveries with expertise in materials behavior. This approach addresses a longstanding challenge: materials designed without considering manufacturing constraints can lead to waste, compromised performance, energy-intensive production, and limited adaptability.
The goal is to ensure that materials perform in practice as they do in design, delivering full structural functionality without compromising manufacturability.
A micro-thruster illustrates the level of complexity this technology can handle. Satellite propulsion components push mechanical, thermal, optical, and chemical properties to extremes. Factors such as propellant mixing, oxidation reactions, heat transfer, and corrosion all affect durability and output. Meeting these demands requires ultrathin, multi-material walls, intricate internal channels, and unconventional shapes—challenges that traditional manufacturing methods struggle to address.
Micro-propulsion is also a useful proxy for dual-use readiness. If volumetric AM can repeatedly produce thin-wall, multi-physics parts with traceable material properties, it becomes relevant to qualification regimes used in space and defense supply chains, where configuration control and repeatability often matter more than raw build speed.
Achieving Precision and Scalability with Volumetric AM
Volumetric additive manufacturing (AM) offers the ability to produce these complex structures while drastically reducing material waste, targeting a near-1:1 buy-to-fly ratio. In comparison, conventional manufacturing and standard layer-based AM methods can consume two to twenty times more material for similar parts.
Scaling volumetric AM is not only a materials problem. It is a photonics and computation problem, too. Light engines based on DMD/SLM architectures, optical efficiency, and reconstruction algorithms can become the gating factors for throughput, accuracy, and energy per part as systems move from lab rigs to factory tooling.
The project’s objectives include fabricating non-planar, suspended, and highly intricate geometries with micron-level surface quality, without the need for support fixtures. Beyond geometric freedom, the team is pursuing mechanical properties currently unattainable with existing methods, along with tailored microscale material composition and reproducibility suitable for series production.
The industrial hurdle will be less about printing a one-off demonstrator and more about proving stability over time: calibration drift in the optical path, resin aging, and statistical variation in cured properties across the build volume. Expect validation to look more like metrology plus process control than a conventional ‘print profile’ exercise.
For adoption beyond prototypes, volumetric AM will need a standards narrative: how parts are specified, inspected, and accepted, and how material property data is generated in a way procurement teams can trust. That shifts the conversation from geometric freedom to traceability, documentation, and qualification pathways.
If successful, these capabilities could unlock new applications across sectors including spaceflight, aerospace, automotive, biomedical engineering, and soft robotics.
Volumetric 3D Printing Gains Momentum Across Research and Industry
Volumetric additive manufacturing has garnered increasing attention in recent years as a fast, support-free alternative to conventional layer-based 3D printing.
In biomedical engineering, the commercial question is not only resolution, but variance. If volumetric AM can reduce part-to-part variability and remove support-related rework, it starts to look like a route to more predictable cost and outcomes in regulated device manufacturing.
Previous advancements include Manifest Technologies’ (formerly Vitro3D) launch of a high-speed P-VAM evaluation kit aimed at commercial adoption, and EPFL’s demonstration of opaque resin printing using volumetric techniques.
Elsewhere, researchers at Utrecht University leveraged volumetric bioprinting to fabricate miniature liver models for regenerative medicine, and more recently, a holographic variant of tomographic VAM (TVAM) showed promise in reducing print times and improving light efficiency.
As the field matures, competition may shift from ‘who can print fastest’ to who controls enabling IP around light engines, reconstruction methods, and resin chemistries compatible with volumetric exposure. The patent landscape for tomographic and holographic approaches is becoming a differentiator as firms aim for defensible industrial platforms.
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Featured image shows From left to right: Peter Baltus, Olaf van der Sluis, Joris Remmers, Apu Saha, Lambèrt van Breemen, and Nick Jaensson. Photo via Eindhoven University of Technology.
