Senior leaders from General Atomics and Divergent will take to the main stage at this year's Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) Conference to share their story of cross-industry additive manufacturing (AM) collaboration.
Steve Fournier, Senior Manager, Additive Manufacturing at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, and Scott Sawyer, Director of Programs at Divergent, will deliver a keynote presentation on March 17th in Reno, Nevada, titled "From Hypercars to Defense Drones: How Two Major Industry Innovators Started Their Partnership Journey at AMUG".
Fournier and Sawyer join The Lego Group's Ronen Hadar to complete the 2026 AMUG Conference main stage keynote line-up, alongside a fireside chat with AMUG Innovators Award recipient Formlabs' founder and CEO Max Lobovsky.
Fournier and Sawyer will discuss how their respective companies connected following a 2022 AMUG Conference keynote speech by Divergent founder Kevin Czinger. As Fournier recently told TCT, they will share how both companies found transferable AM value and identified applicable AM opportunities across vastly different product lines.
"Not all aircraft are designed the same way, but they have commonalities in the way we approach the design. So looking at the way Divergent was approaching their structure forced us to reconsider the design aspects," Fournier told TCT on the Additive Insight podcast.
On finding valuable AM insight outside of your industry 'bubble', Fournier said, "When you live in a bubble of expertise or with additive, you don't realise that not everybody breathes this in and out every day. So that application became very beneficial to the business and that drove a lot more attention outside of our bubble and it really brought a lot of people into the fold to figure out everything we needed to figure out about this particular technology. From there we've evolved our maturation of the design aspects, the manufacturing workflows within the Divergent ecosystem and outside."
Laura Griffiths
The 2026 AMUG Conference will take place on 15-19th March in Reno, Nevada. The conference will feature nearly 150 presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and hands-on training sessions. The AMUGexpo exhibition element will also be accessible on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and will include the Start-up Launchpad, featuring up to 10 newcomers.
The all-inclusive conference registration fee includes meals, drinks, networking receptions and special Wednesday evening event. Register for your ticket here.
