The TCT 3Sixty Convention 2026 is the place the AM neighborhood comes for readability, route and substance. Constructed by the editorial and technical minds behind TCT Journal and the RAPID + TCT convention, the programme cuts by means of the noise to ship the insights that truly matter, guided by an advisory board with greater than a century of mixed expertise on the sharp finish of additive innovation.
Positioned on the present flooring and fully free to attend, the convention is designed to present each customer – engineers, designers, choice makers and newcomers – the instruments to make smarter AM selections.
Forward of TCT 3Sixty, the TCT staff has chosen the convention periods that they’re most wanting ahead to.
Amanda Hull, TCT 3Sixty Convention Supervisor & Specialist Mission Supervisor
Creating a powerful enterprise case for additive manufacturing (AM) within the automotive trade is never simple. This presentation will discover the important thing challenges organisations face when justifying AM adoption, from navigating advanced price modelling issues to precisely projecting return on funding. It can additionally look at the industrial realities that affect choice making — together with funds constraints, capital funding cycles, and the necessity to clearly reveal worth over standard manufacturing strategies.
Attendees will depart with sensible insights and frameworks to extra successfully talk, justify, and safe assist for AM applied sciences and tools throughout each technical and management groups.
RBSL has been actively engaged on Mission TAMPA for the previous three and a half years all through spirals one, two, and three. Below the three spirals, RBSL have developed appropriate inner/exterior processes to fabricate 10 separate elements for the Warrior, Panther, Titan, Cr2 and Terrier armoured automobiles. All elements to this point have used the LB-PBF and SLS additive manufacturing methods, nonetheless RBSL even have the in-house functionality to fabricate utilizing a metallic paste deposition method in addition to quite a few polymer AM programs. Capabilities in design for AM, FEA for AM, superior generative design and topology optimisation have been developed throughout Mission TAMPA. RBSL will probably be presenting the teachings learnt from Spirals 3a and 3b.
PANEL SESSION: Championing the Subsequent Technology: Tales from SMF Rising Stars | Teula Bradshaw, Sanjay Mortimer Basis CEO / Charlotte Bridgewater, Newcastle College scholar / Abby Duckworth, Cambridge Consultants Mechanical Engineer / Zac Smith, Williams F1 Crew Manufacturing Applied sciences
This panel session will spotlight how the Sanjay Mortimer Basis (SMF) champions the trade’s brightest younger skills, celebrating neurodivergent younger individuals in engineering and 3D printing. Chaired by SMF CEO Teula Bradshaw, the session spotlights earlier SMF Rising Star Award winners – the place they’re now, what they’re reaching, and the way SMF’s assist has formed their growth. The panel will discover how early recognition and steering speed up abilities and open doorways for rising innovators, and the way initiatives just like the Rising Star Award play a essential position in strengthening the sector’s expertise pipeline. The dialogue will lead straight into the thrilling announcement of this yr’s TCT SMF Rising Star Award winner!
Laura Griffiths, TCT Head of Content material
PANEL SESSION: AM in Follow – Person‑led insights from JLR, Rolls‑Royce, Nestlé and GKN Aerospace | Laura Griffiths, TCT Head of Content material / Luke Fox, JLR / Ben O’Brien, Rolls-Royce / Justin Summerhayes, Nestle
TCT Head of Content material Laura Griffiths will convey collectively TCT UK Person Group contributors from JLR, Rolls‑Royce, Nestlé and JLR to discover the urgent matters shaping additive manufacturing adoption immediately. This cross‑trade panel will delve additional into the shared challenges and successes AM customers face – from constructing a strong enterprise case and optimising workflows to implementing know-how at scale inside established operations and creating adept groups. The dialogue will discover how organisations are advancing digital integration to unlock higher effectivity and traceability. Attendees will acquire person‑pushed insights, sensible learnings and actionable methods straight knowledgeable by actual experiences throughout trade verticals.
As energy densities rise throughout EVs, aerospace, and electronics, thermal administration has quietly turn out to be considered one of engineering’s hardest unsolved issues as a result of standard design strategies cannot discover the geometries that physics calls for.
This speak will discover how physics-driven generative design, mixed with additive manufacturing, is essentially altering what’s potential. The presentation will stroll by means of why conventional thermal design has hit a ceiling, what it means to let the physics — not solely human instinct — outline part geometry, and why AM is the enabling situation that makes all of it manufacturable.
Translating Analysis into Readiness: Co-Creating Additive Manufacturing (AM) Schooling with Trade | Professor Robert Kay| College of Leeds
To equip engineering graduates with the talents their careers will demand, curricula have to be formed by trade’s actual wants and priorities. In additive manufacturing, persistent abilities gaps in areas equivalent to design for AM, supplies course of relationships, high quality assurance, and digital workflows proceed to restrict how successfully organisations can undertake and scale these applied sciences. Closing that hole requires curriculum co-design that goes past floor degree engagement, embedding translational pathways that information college students from laboratory scale experimentation into industrially lifelike environments.
This speak will draw on the work of Professor Robert Kay on the College of Leeds, whose twin position as Professor of Superior Manufacturing and founding father of Hydra Manufacturing positions him on the intersection of educational analysis and industrial manufacturing. With over 25 years of expertise in hybrid additive manufacturing and a powerful observe file in patents, spin outs, and know-how licensing, Professor Kay presents a confirmed mannequin for a way analysis development throughout Know-how Readiness Ranges can straight inform educating by means of undertaking primarily based studying, trade placements, and analysis and commercialisation targeted educating.
The speak will replicate on how competency frameworks co-designed with trade companions can anchor these strategies in genuine manufacturing scale necessities, and what which means for the way forward for AM training.
Sam Davies, Group Content material Supervisor
Creating engineers who’re each succesful and assured in additive manufacturing stays a big trade problem, and a technique GKN Aerospace helps to deal with that is by providing arms on internship alternatives. This session will comply with the journey of an intern who joined our AM staff seven months in the past, getting into the position with sturdy enthusiasm however restricted sensible expertise. As she navigated actual world AM engineering, sudden technical hurdles, speedy downside fixing, and evolving tasks, her abilities, confidence, and understanding of AM adoption grew rapidly. Listening to her story first hand, this session will discover the challenges new customers face when adopting and optimising AM applied sciences, and the way arms on expertise accelerates progress, confidence, and functionality as an rising AM engineer.
The adoption of Additive Manufacturing in defence provide chains is hindered by inconsistent certification strategies, mental property issues, and challenges in safe cross-border knowledge switch. Present qualification approaches are sometimes outlined by particular person OEMs or AM producers, with no unified normal enabling interoperability between allied nations. This undertaking addresses these gaps by implementing a standardized framework for Operational Qualification (OQ) and Efficiency Qualification (PQ) on the Laser Powder Mattress Fusion (LPBF) course of.
Led by Eaton Company, in partnership with EOS, Materials Options Restricted (UK), and 3Degrees, the hassle establishes machine-material equivalency between two platforms situated in the US and the UK. This program goals to reveal a scalable pathway for cross-continental AM provide chain integration between U.S. DoD and U.Ok. MoD stakeholders.
Additive Manufacturing – Why It’s Now a WorldSkill | Steve Cox, AMFORi Consulting & Bryn Jones, Grwp Llandrillo-Menai & WorldSkills UK
How can we inspire younger individuals to construct the additive manufacturing abilities and confidence the sector wants for the longer term? WorldSkills – usually referred to as the “Expertise Olympics” – is accelerating technical growth by means of actual‑world, competitors‑primarily based coaching. Since AM joined the programme, participation and functionality have grown quickly throughout the UK. This session will discover the competitors’s journey and what we’ve realized from watching younger rivals push themselves technically and personally.
