Metal additive manufacturing crosses into production, and qualification becomes the constraint

Industry commentary going into 2026 frames metal additive manufacturing as moving from validation into genuine industrial production, where cost, repeatability, and robustness are no longer negotiable. The recurring theme is that qualification and certification, not raw capability, are the bottleneck. The institute reads this as confirmation that the hard problems are the metallurgical ones it covers, namely porosity, residual stress, and microstructure control.