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MTC

A decade of the UK's National Centre for Additive Manufacturing

"We want to see an order of magnitude growth of AM adoption in the UK."

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For the last ten years, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) has been home to the UK’s National Centre for Additive Manufacturing (NCAM); an open, technology-agnostic hub, equipped to cover the entire AM process chain. Over those ten years, machines have evolved, footprint has gotten bigger, projects grander, but a fundamental mission – to increase the adoption of AM in the UK – has remained.

When TCT first visited NCAM back in 2015, we hailed it as “the fresh face of UK manufacturing”, owed to its contemporary look and plans to inspire Great British manufacturing with the possibility of what was, at the time, still very much a hyped technology. Walking through the doors in 2025 as the centre celebrates its milestone anniversary, that sentiment still feels appropriate: optimism but grounded in proof as build plates filled with technical research benchmarks are presented with as much enthusiasm as a huge wire arc 3D printed propeller showcase piece.

"Different industries are adopting AM at different speeds,” Ruaridh Mitchinson, MTC’s Technology Manager for additive manufacturing tells TCT. “I think that's been a really big learning curve for us, being pragmatic and realistic with adoption of technology and trying to educate customers – and many of them know this – but just hammer home, here's what reality looks like, and here's a project that gets you to where you want to be.”

The shop floor of the NCAM is an engineer’s dream. There are 26 AM platforms installed on-site across polymers, metals and ceramics, from desktop to large-format. On one side, for example, you’ll find a CEAD robot-based printer that was recently used by Weir Minerals to develop large polymer alternatives to its traditional wooden sand casting patterns, which can now be recycled with the help of an in-house extrusion line that’s being used to turn parts into reusable feedstock. On the other side, you’ll see a 20 ft khaki green shipping container featuring SPEE3D’s XSPEE3D printer, which is being evaluated to test on demand production of metal parts in remote locations and harsh conditions. NCAM views itself as an innovation partner for SMEs working on de-risking their AM adoption, all the way through to Fortune 500 companies working on multi-million pound projects.

Then there are its 90+ collaborative member companies, and additive OEMs who will often work with NCAM to de-risk new hardware or software before putting it onto the market. It’s agile, machines shift around as needs evolve and new industry challenges come forth, paying attention to government strategies and industry roadmaps. As a member of the UK’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult, supported by Innovate UK, its funding, Trepleton explains, enables the centre to invest in and explore the technologies that users will want not just today, but the near future.

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“We're uniquely positioned in the TRL space, we work really closely with our academics to understand what they're pushing through, what they think is going to be the next generation,” Ross Trepleton, Associate Director for Component Manufacturing, said. “Then we've got our industrial membership base and our position as Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and Ministry of Defence (MOD) AM steering group chairs to understand industry needs.”

Those industry needs are being met by more than just machines. At NCAM, there’s dedicated space for powder characterisation, post-processing and metrology & NDE, which illustrate not only the full, often hidden, AM workflow, but also how we might think about reshaping our UK supply chains with in-house capabilities. Its open access metal powder bed facility, which quite literally sticks a glass window up to every AM unknown, from powder handling to material benchmarking, has seen more than 100 organisations come through, at least half of which are SMEs, to explore new application and material opportunities. Today, an AMCM metal powder bed system equipped with two nLIGHT lasers is churning out copper, aluminium, and titanium parts for applications thought to be next frontiers of AM adoption: electrification and hydrogen fuel cells. But the NCAM team is also not afraid to say when AM isn’t the right technology. In fact, it’s a very common conversation. AM, oftentimes, can be a tightrope between passion and pragmatism.

“You need to have people going along that whole development journey,” Trepleton said. “Actually getting parts into production is not easy and you need to go in with your eyes wide open and you need senior stakeholder buy in. It's not quick. AM has huge potential but it's not generally an easy path to get there.”

NCAM is many things to many stakeholders. It’s one of five ASTM AM Centres of Excellence around the world, contributing to the development of AM standards, and has completed nine projects as the European Space Agency’s AM Benchmarking Centre. When NCAM first opened its doors, it had just finished a programme with Rolls-Royce to produce a flight-ready front bearing structure, which at the time, was one of the largest jet engine metal components ever printed. The two went on to establish a pre-production facility focused on electron beam melting, which supplied 240 aerospace standard components to Rolls Royce’s UltraFan Engine development programme. Another early MTC supporter, ATI, funded a project called DRAMA focused on the acceleration of AM throughout the aerospace supply chain and helped 25 aerospace supply chain companies in their adoption of the technology. The MTC was also a key voice in the UK’s national strategy for AM published back in 2017. The initiative, which made recommendations to the UK government around the potential for AM, was not adopted by the Government’s Industrial Strategy that shortly followed, but today, the MTC/NCAM is taking a different approach to embedding AM on a national level. Most recently, the MTC worked together with the Aerospace Technology Institute's (ATI) to develop an AM strategy that targeted significant growth in the number of flying AM parts in civil aerospace, designed and delivered by an end-to-end UK supply chain.

“We don't necessarily see a need for a refreshed national strategy at the moment,” Trepleton said. “We see AM fitting within and being a key enabler to deliver sector specific strategies, not a strategy in its own right.”

Defence and clean power are two sectors where the NCAM is seeing momentum. As defence manufacturers look to AM as a way to rapidly produce essential equipment and re-build sovereign supply chains, and the demands for greener fuel sources through hydrogen and electrification grow, NCAM sees opportunities to explore new materials and develop components that can't be made in any other way.

“We're transitioning away from just using AM to replicate a casting or forging,” Trepleton said. “That is the tip of the iceberg, having fully optimised structures made out of bespoke materials will unlock the true potential of AM.”

Education is a key part of that next frontier. That means building capabilities across the supply chain, and confidence in process and materials so that AM reaches the highly coveted position of ‘just another tool in the toolbox.’ It’s the reason skills form such a huge part of the NCAMs output. It’s a long-term effort, according to Trepleton, which is why alongside its AM apprenticeships, advanced manufacturing training programmes, and university partnerships, the MTC has supported over 30 AM PhDs to date to ensure those skills are embedded right through to industry.

“We see it as part of our role here,” Trepleton said. “Not just training people but also seeding industry with experts.”

In 10 years, NCAM has completed more than 700 projects and today, across the MTC, there are more than 100 people working on AM at any given time, whether that’s testing large components in multi-laser PBF or evaluating new machine capabilities in ceramics. Over that last decade, understanding and industry acceptance of AM has developed, the hype has subsided, and the technology has reached a level of maturity required by critical applications in demanding industries from aerospace to healthcare.

“If we can help make AM boring,” Mitchinson says, then, “we’re doing our job.”

It’s a role NCAM will continue to champion into the next decade to ensure the acceleration of AM adoption in the UK through meaningful research, collaborations and applications that provide real solutions to real challenges.

“The fundamental is still there,” Trepleton said. “We want to see an order of magnitude growth of AM adoption in the UK, and we want to have organisations using AM effectively and getting those organisations to see some sort of return on investment.”

Mitchinson said, “Even though progress sometimes seems slow, it's crucial to recognise and celebrate successes. It may not always feel like we're making headway, but capturing and reporting these achievements is vital. In this challenging landscape, the more data we gather and share, the better equipped we'll be to advance as an industry. This collective effort will ultimately drive us forward.”

Trepleton concludes, “We're just starting.”

This article originally appeared inside TCT Europe Edition Vol. 33 Issue 1. Subscribe here to receive your FREE print copy of TCT Magazine, delivered to your door six times a year.