Spec Wars, Supply Chain and Scrap Heaps: The Real Challenges in Additive Manufacturing: AMUG Conference 2025

As additive manufacturing scales beyond prototyping into sustained production, the metal powder segment is confronting a new wave of pressures—technical, logistical, and geopolitical. At the 2025 AMUG Conference, an industry panel featuring executives from Elementum 3D, Amaero, Equispheres, IperionX, and America Makes, leaders identified the challenges in aligning supply chains with rapidly shifting demand, tightening U.S. sourcing regulations, and the fragmented nature of specifications and data ownership. From qualification hurdles to overlooked issues, the conversation shows an industry ready for an inflection point but still grappling with legacy systems and immature infrastructure.

Insights from the Building a Resilient Supply Chain, Securing Critical Metals for Additive Manufacturing panel

Additive has a voice but not a seat at the critical minerals table. Other industries dominate the supply of key elements like scandium, titanium, and hafnium. Additive manufacturing needs to assert its strategic importance in those sourcing discussions.

The next big push is cross-industry knowledge transfer. Initiatives like America Makes’ new track signal that the community is moving toward transparency, owning failures, and sharing them to speed collective learning.

Specification writing is a hidden efficiency lever. Properly written, application-specific powder specs can lower costs and improve performance, but the know-how is often missing outside of a small group of powder insiders.

Legacy sustainment systems are at odds with modern AM flexibility. OEM-proprietary materials, rigid specs, and old standards make modernization difficult. Bridging this gap requires coordinated education, especially with buyers and engineers at the spec-writing stage.

Material handling issues are often logistical, not technical. Problems arise less from material chemistry, but from lidless bins, humidity, and local fire code misunderstandings: simple things with outsized consequences.

US Metal Powder Leaders Grapple with Additive Manufacturing’s Demand Forecasting and Qualification Bottlenecks

Metal Additive Manufacturing is navigating deep uncertainty around demand forecasting, qualification cycles, and standardization, tensions laid bare during this recent panel at the 2025 AMUG Conference.

“The timeline is very difficult to nail down,” said Jacob Nuechterlein, president and founder of Elementum 3D, a U.S. firm developing proprietary metal alloys. “From testing to qualification might be predictable, six months to a year, but once you get into qualification, it can stretch one to two years or even longer due to political and technical hurdles.”

Greg Kline of Amaero, which supplies high-temperature metal powders like titanium and refractory metals, echoed the concern. “You go down that path of development, and then the end customer pulls the plug. What do you do with all that work you did?” he said. “Staying in front of this is no easy task.”

The issue is not merely one of erratic demand, but of the present instability of the AM metals market. As Evan Butler-Jones, VP of Product and Strategy at Equispheres, put it, “It’s not a stable, pre-existing market… most production programs are emerging alongside new materials.” Underscoring the cooperative nature of supply chain building, the VP added, “We need our customers to understand we are building the supply chain together.”

A fragmented approach to intellectual property and data has further slowed progress. Elementum 3D, for instance, has taken a process-oriented approach to IP rather than focusing on individual chemistries. But the larger bottleneck, Nuechterlein said, is data collection. “It’s expensive to gather and often split across entities,” he explained, pointing to the difficulty in translating data from one system, such as an EOS M290, to another like an SLM 500.

Ben DiMarco, Technology Transition Director at America Makes, referenced a recurring refrain from his collaborators at the Air Force: “It’s two years and $2 million for qualified material.” He added that America Makes, whose efforts align closely with the Department of Defense (DoD), is working to prioritize materials based on industry demand to guide government-backed investments. “We don’t want to make strategic investments in materials that no one will use.”

Efforts to streamline qualification were a recurring theme. Amaero is now producing new alloys directly on production units, bypassing the need for later scale-up. Kline is hoping this will “shorten the gap” to market.

Equispheres is heavily involved in standards committees to move beyond the “single supplier, single machine” approach that has historically stymied qualification. Butler-Jones pointed to the need to balance process stability with innovation: “How do you allow for change while locking down your process?” In response, DiMarco highlighted recent progress, including a publicly available process control document and evolving DoD programs focused on performance-based qualification. “Here’s my requirement: do I meet it or not?” he said, characterizing the shift from static specifications toward goal-oriented frameworks.

Progress is visible, “there have been massive changes,” said Nuechterlein. “Three or four years ago, I could spend $2 million on data, and it would only be accepted by one customer. Now, we know what’s required to get broader acceptance. That’s helped with cost and decision-making.”

The consensus among panelists is clear: technical innovation in AM metals is outpacing supply chain and qualification infrastructure. But a coordinated effort across industry, government, and standards bodies is gradually shifting the landscape from an ad hoc scramble to something resembling strategic cohesion.

US Additive Metal Leaders Target Domestic Supply Chain, Data Standardization, and Refractory Innovation Amid Rising Demand

The additive manufacturing industry continues to wrestle with complexity in material sourcing, qualification cycles, and sustainability. These challenges are made more pressing by government pressure to onshore supply chains and rising demand for next-generation refractory alloys.

For Amaero’s Kline, the conversation begins with consistency across the full production chain. “Ten years ago, you had wild variations from machine to machine,” he said. “Now, things are more consistent, powder, sieve, and dust collectors. If we can align across the value chain, we can progress further.”

Discussion around group purchasing organizations (GPOs), often used in healthcare to reduce procurement costs for commoditized products, revealed both interest and skepticism. “That’s not a good way to build a supply chain,” said Evan Butler-Jones, VP of Product & Strategy at Equispheres. “It’s a good way to optimize an existing one.”

Still, Butler-Jones acknowledged that coordinating demand across OEMs could help reduce supplier risk, “If five OEMs are all buying the same material, they each want to commit to a minimum, but no one wants to commit to the maximum. Consolidating that demand, without commoditizing specialty powders, could help.”

Elementum 3D’s Nuechterlein underscored the capital intensity behind even small-scale material bets. “A lot of material suppliers have been taking the risk,” he said. “As a small company, I have to answer to investors about which powders hit and which are still sitting on the shelf.”

The pilot-scale conundrum, where customers request 200–1000kg batches without committing to follow-up orders, was flagged as a persistent bottleneck. “You clean all your equipment, maybe don’t get it right the first time, then the customer takes two or three years to test it,” said Ben DiMarco, Technology Transition Director at America Makes. “It’s unsustainable.”

In response, America Makes is assembling an industry advisory board to prioritize melt and atomization for critical materials. The institute is also calling for more input from two often-absent perspectives: purchasing teams and downstream part producers.

On sustainability, panelists agreed that material waste management must be integrated early, not post-hoc. Amaero repurposes off-spec powders in its large-format parts program. “Instead of stockpiling oversized refractory material, we consolidate it into 5000-pound valves, such as might be used for a submarine said Kline.

Equispheres emphasizes reusability and sourcing from low-carbon aluminum producers in Canada, using hydropower or nuclear power for atomization. “We’ve just published a paper on reusability for laser powder bed fusion,” said Butler-Jones. “When you start printing several tons a month, that efficiency adds up.”

At Elementum 3D, the focus is on closed-loop feedstock. “Customers are asking if their own scrap can be recycled into new powder,” Nuechterlein said. “It’s possible, but you spend more qualifying it than on new material. Still, it’s being seriously explored.”

Critical materials remain central to the conversation. “With recent government focus, we’re seeing pull in everything, especially titanium and the refractory segment,” said Kline. “Hypersonics is big C-103 [a niobium-hafnium-titanium alloy], for example. But once you start working with hafnium, you realize how thin that supply chain really is.”

While hypersonics may attract attention, Nuechterlein cautioned on volume. “The total demand is relatively low,” he noted. “We’re seeing more opportunity in high-temperature materials for rocketry, weaponry, and suppressors. Suppressors have exploded as an application—at SHOT Show, every third booth had a 3D printed one.”

For DiMarco, modern usage patterns are reshaping legacy alloys. “Many materials we use were developed in the 1950s or 1960s. They were designed for different products and consumption rates. Today, cell phones and EVs are changing that equation.” Butler-Jones also highlighted the broader competition for resources. “We’re competing with electronics and defense for the same constituents. Even sourcing alloying elements for advanced aluminum becomes a geopolitical and market-scale challenge.” The Critical Minerals Forum, a DARPA-funded initiative, was cited as a useful resource for mapping industrial needs against mineral availability.

In response to supply chain pressures, both Elementum 3D and Amaero are increasingly focusing on domestic inputs. “There’s a clear hierarchy,” said Nuechterlein. “U.S.-produced materials are the first choice, North American second, across the Atlantic third. Pacific-sourced feedstocks are a last resort.” Amaero’s strategy has been to localize electrode production for its gas atomization lines. “We bet early on a domestic feedstock model,” Kline noted. “So far, that’s been the right move.”

To support broader industry resilience, DiMarco pointed to federal investment initiatives like the Future Alloy Study & Testing Center (FAST) and the IMPACT programs. “These target casting and forging capability, which is key if we want to modernize with additive while retaining domestic capacity.”

Metal Additive Manufacturing Metal: What’s Next?

Elementum 3D formally announced the production availability of GRX-810 alloy under ISO 9001-compliant procedures. “We’re producing it in pretty good sizes,” said Nuechterlein, “If you need a few tons, we can get it to you.”

Meanwhile, America Makes is weighing a new track focused on failures in AM qualification, rather than polished success stories. “We want to talk about what went wrong, what failed during qualification,” said Ben DiMarco. Audience questions during the closing session exposed the pressure on powder suppliers and OEMs alike to anticipate demand, handle powder responsibly, and ensure upstream compliance with an evolving tangle of sourcing mandates.

On the topic of demand forecasting, Nuechterlein emphasized long-term relationships and application-specific clarity. “If they can’t tell me about the application, I have to discount the forecast,” he said. “I assign probabilities based on what they’ve bought before, and if they’ve followed through.”

Speakers were reminded that critical mineral sourcing has moved from suggestion to statute, with new DoD clauses coming into force that prohibit tungsten and tantalum from non-allied nations. “Think right off the bat: am I getting this from a strategic partner?” said one questioner, pointing to Department of Energy and Interior lists that define eligible critical minerals and countries.

Evan Butler-Jones of Equispheres confirmed that traceability has become a customer requirement. “Where are these alloying elements coming from? That’s part of every conversation we have,” he said. Australia’s inclusion in the U.S. industrial base has provided some relief, particularly for scandium.

Butler-Jones and Nuechterlein also called attention to persistent knowledge gaps on powder handling. “The biggest risk to metal powders? Leaving the lid off,” said Nuechterlein. “Moisture gets in, it clumps, and that powder’s finished.” He added that powder specifications remain frequently mismatched to actual application needs. “We see specs that are just copies of something else… not because they’ve been validated, but because the requester didn’t know better. There’s an opportunity to reduce cost and improve performance by tying specs more closely to the actual use case.”

To accelerate progress, Chris Prue of IperionX emphasized early customer education. “If you’re the only one using that powder, you’re narrowing your options,” he said. “We need to make customers smarter upfront, so they build with standard specs when possible.”

The path forward for metal additive manufacturing is increasingly defined by collaboration, data transparency, and strategic sourcing. Whether it’s reducing powder waste through novel reprocessing, aligning specs to actual application needs, or investing in domestic feedstocks, the emphasis is shifting from isolated innovation to coordinated execution. With new material qualifications underway, government-backed reshoring mandates accelerating, and greater openness to lessons learned from failed projects, the industry is beginning to close the gap between AM’s technical promise and its commercial reality. As one panelist put it, the goal is no longer just to make additive work, it’s to make it work at scale, sustainably, and with strategic foresight.

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Featured image shows Jacob Nuechterlein, Greg Kline, Ben DiMarco and Chris Prue [L-R]. Photo by Michael Petch.