Nikon’s move into additive manufacturing was not a sudden departure from cameras into fashionably futuristic territory, according to Hamid Zarringhalam, chief executive of Nikon Advanced Manufacturing. It reflects the company’s long industrial lineage, stretching from optics and glass through semiconductor lithography to today’s metal 3D printing ambitions.
Zarringhalam spent more than three decades in Nikon’s semiconductor business and frames additive as a logical continuation of that expertise. The lithography systems that supported decades of Moore’s Law, he said, embedded capabilities in precision motion, optics, control electronics, metrology and materials understanding that now underpin Nikon’s AM strategy. “Those machines are some of the most sophisticated systems in the world,” he said. “At the heart of that technology is the integration of leading-edge optics, precision equipment, extreme metrology and even material characterisation.”
Heritage to Hardware: Why Nikon Sees AM as a Natural Extension
He describes additive as part of a wider push into digital manufacturing that Nikon began exploring a decade ago and committed to five years back. Early internal projects led to acquisitions, notably SLM Solutions, a service business that became Nikon’s engineering and manufacturing services arm, and the creation of a consolidated Advanced Manufacturing division. Nikon has invested around one billion dollars in the push so far.
Financially, the digital manufacturing segment remains modest relative to the group’s scale. Zarringhalam said first-half revenue last year was below $100 million but materially above $65 million. Almost all of that revenue, he added, is generated by additive manufacturing, and within additive it is dominated by powder bed fusion systems. Directed energy deposition and limited subtractive capabilities play supporting roles.
Defence, Space and Aviation: Where Demand Is Hardening
External conditions have strengthened Nikon’s conviction. The company saw defence demand as one of the decisive accelerants. Western governments are trying to rebuild industrial capacity after decades of consolidation and underinvestment, while conflict and geopolitical pressure have highlighted weak points in existing supply chains. Conventional processes such as forging and casting cannot be expanded easily enough to meet demand, particularly for new weapon architectures.
Zarringhalam argues that additive is already proving necessary in areas such as heat exchangers and propulsion components where geometry, thermal performance and weight targets collide with the limits of legacy production. “The conventional supply chains of casting and forging are simply not there to address the gaps,” he said. “Advanced weapon systems need advanced manufacturing.” Nikon expects similar structural demand from space and aviation, where engines designed with additive in mind should begin to enter service volume towards the end of the decade.
Scale and Installed Base: From Demonstrators to Industrial Fleets
Much of Nikon’s pitch rests on scale. The company positions itself at the large-format end of metal printing, with SLM’s 12-laser systems already deployed in significant numbers. Zarringhalam stressed that these are not demonstration units. “We have the only industrialised machine that can print 600 by 600 by 1.5 metres using 12 lasers,” he said. “It is not a PowerPoint thing. We have around 80 of these operating as a fleet.”
Industrialisation remains the unresolved benchmark. Zarringhalam is blunt about how far the industry still has to travel. Only a tiny fraction of metal parts globally that could be produced additively are actually manufactured that way, and he sees true maturity as tied to certified, repeatable, high volume production runs. Medical devices and some space applications qualify, but the wider market does not yet. Aviation and defence, in his view, are moving closest. Once thousands of identical components are specified as printed by default in major programmes, then the label industrialised will be justified.
Nikon is cautious about declaring a clean breakpoint where metal additive manufacturing becomes “industrialised”, yet Zarringhalam points to a growing body of hard targets from governments and customers. He highlights language in the latest US National Defense Authorization Act, which includes around 20 pages on advanced and additive manufacturing and sets a requirement for 1 million parts to be produced using additive processes by the end of 2026. The detail is still fuzzy. “I don’t know if that means 1 million different parts, or 300 parts many times,” he said, adding that such volumes still represent an early stage. For him, the more meaningful sign will come when ubiquitous components, such as aero engines, use printed parts as the plan of record rather than a special case. “When something that is ubiquitous, like an engine, is additive by default, that is when we are industrialised.”
Budget data points in the same direction. Analysis of the US fiscal 2026 budget request suggests roughly $3.3bn of programmes include an additive element, an increase of 83 per cent on the previous year’s approved level. For Nikon and its peers, this is a structural signal that additive manufacturing is being written into procurement and capability planning rather than treated as a discretionary innovation line item.
Behind that trend sits a sizeable installed base. According to figures provided after the interview, Nikon SLM Solutions has shipped about 1,100 laser powder bed fusion platforms worldwide. Around 80 of these are the flagship large-format NXG systems, close to 80 per cent of which are running as fleets at single sites. High utilisation sectors extend beyond defence into aerospace, aviation, automotive, and energy, and Nikon says a majority of LPBF customers are already operating in serial production. Zarringhalam is dismissive of the idea that such systems are still being treated as pilot toys. Referring to a customer operating six NXG machines at one location, he noted, “People don’t buy six machines to play with.”
Some of those environments have moved well past prototyping culture. Nikon sees customers where every installed system is committed to production, with machines running around the clock and downtime treated as critical. In one case, he describes, if a single system fails, the customer’s line effectively stops because there is no spare capacity and no conventional alternative ready to take the load.
At the same time, much of that production is tightly constrained. State-of-the-art platforms are typically dedicated to a single alloy and, often, a narrow envelope of parts. Operators rarely change material on a machine because of the cleaning effort, downtime and qualification risk. Build volume also locks in usage. Within those constraints Zarringhalam sees both extremes. Some customers repeat the same qualified geometry continuously on the same equipment. Others have the theoretical flexibility of multi-laser platforms, yet still run them like older tools. He cites a case, not involving Nikon, where an end user qualified a part on a single-laser machine, then bought a more productive four-laser model, but continues to print with just one beam to avoid requalification.
Qualification: The Hidden Brake on Growth
The common thread is a testing burden that many in the sector now regard as the main brake on growth. “One of the biggest hurdles in industrialisation is qualification and testing,” Zarringhalam said. Legacy castings and forgings were often designed half a century ago and validated using the metrology of that era. New printed parts must match that performance one-to-one, even when non-destructive evaluation reveals better defect profiles. He describes a case where the additive version met all requirements and showed fewer, smaller defects than the incumbent part. The customer hesitated regardless. “They said, ‘I don’t know if it is a good thing to have fewer defects or smaller defects than the other one’.”
While civil aviation brings obvious justification for extreme conservatism, he argues that the same template is being applied to components whose risk profile is very different, such as expendable missile hardware or drone structures. The result is that promising applications stall in paperwork rather than on the shop floor.
Economics of Production: Speed, Cost and Open Materials Strategy
Cost structure remains equally application-specific. Zarringhalam is wary of simple rules for what dominates the economics, pointing to materials, post processing and utilisation as three different levers. For Nikon’s own systems, he focuses on cost per kilogram of output and the productivity of the printing step. The company has driven build rates by increasing the number and power of lasers on its flagship machines, with the NXG platform using twelve 1kW lasers. Scanner performance, motion planning and improved overall equipment effectiveness are part of the same push. Nikon reports uptime of about 90 per cent in the field and has tried to trim unproductive intervals such as data transfer, cooling and build module exchange.
Layer thickness is another dial. Nikon works with customers on parameter sets that use 90 micron or 120 micron layers where tolerances allow it, and measures throughput in cubic centimetres per hour rather than simple parts per build. That focus is mirrored on the powder side, where suppliers have reduced costs through scale and better process control. Here Nikon’s strategy is to maintain an open materials architecture. “We do not vendor lock,” Zarringhalam said. “If there is a business case for a part in a particular alloy, any qualified material from any supplier is acceptable.”
The capital cost of the hardware still looms large on balance sheets. Zarringhalam says most customers depreciate machines over four or five years, although they use them far longer. Once the book value is written down, he argues, the marginal economics become attractive for operators that have secured reliable, high-margin programmes. The variation sits less in the technology itself than in each customer’s mix of parts, contractual terms and willingness to push through the qualification bottleneck that still separates pilot success from widespread industrial
Turning to broader expectations around metal additive, Zarringhalam said the sector has moderated its outlook significantly. Forecasts made several years ago anticipated annual growth rates of about 26 per cent, yet more recent projections have settled closer to 13 per cent. That shift reflects three constraints that he believes the industry underestimated: qualification and testing hurdles, the demanding economics of cost per kilogram in highly price-sensitive sectors, and macroeconomic headwinds such as higher interest rates and investment caution. “You cannot underestimate adoption challenges,” he said. “Things die in qualification and testing. Economics matter. And macro conditions slowed decisions.”
Even with government funding rising, he cautions against assuming rapid transformation. Programmes may allocate billions, yet procurement cycles, certification procedures and organisational inertia slow the conversion of budgets into printed hardware. He argues that expectations need to reflect the structural nature of industrial change rather than hype cycles. Nonetheless, he still regards current projections as healthy. A sustained double-digit compound annual growth rate across five years, he said, is something most sectors would view favourably.
Technology Direction: LPBF Dominance and the Rise of DED
On technology direction, Nikon remains convinced that large-format laser powder bed fusion will continue to anchor the market, supported by strong growth in mid-size platforms. Zarringhalam argues that LPBF’s precision, stability and quality metrics fit the requirements of aerospace, aviation, defence and high-performance automotive. At the same time, he expects directed energy deposition to expand faster from a smaller base, particularly where component size and build rate outweigh ultimate precision. “There is a place for mid-size machines, large format, and ultra-large systems,” he said. “DED is growing faster from a smaller base and will become a major part of the landscape.” He sees continuing innovation around speed, stability and accuracy across both categories, with users matching technology choice to geometry, material and economic case rather than any single doctrine.
What Will Actually Drive Adoption
Looking forward, the question of what limits adoption once reliability matches traditional manufacturing leads back to fundamentals. Not all parts require advanced production techniques, he said. Nails, brackets and many commodity metal items simply do not justify the cost structure of additive manufacturing. Even when predictability improves, the deciding variables will continue to be performance advantage, cost competitiveness, scalability and responsiveness. Defence programmes highlight one of the most compelling long-term cases: repair, sustainment and rapid access to spare parts. Legacy aircraft and ageing fleets face grounding risks when traditional supply chains cannot reproduce obsolete castings or forgings. Additive offers a path to redesign, produce and qualify parts faster, potentially close to the point of need.
For Zarringhalam, growth will come from such targeted, structurally justified use cases rather than sweeping claims of disruption. If the share of metal parts manufactured additively rises from an estimated 3 per cent to 6 per cent globally and then to 12 per cent, the industrial impact would still be profound. “If 6 per cent becomes 12 per cent, that is doubling,” he said. “I will take that.”
Industrialisation is still constrained by qualification burdens, economics, and institutional caution, yet the direction now appears structural rather than speculative. Nikon expects growth to come from specific, high-value applications rather than promises of universal disruption, and if metal AM simply doubles its global footprint, the industrial consequences will already be significant.
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Featured image shows Nikon SLM Solutions at Formnext 2025. Photo by Michael Petch.
