How end-users lead AM’s shift to production in the energy sector

Additive manufacturing is moving from trials to central production workflows across the energy sector. The clearest indicator is revenue momentum tied to direct part production rather than prototyping in many sectors, from nuclear to oil and gas and renewables.

VoxelMatters’ market data show total spending on AM hardware, materials, and services for energy applications at $581 million in 2023 and $709 million in 2024, a year-over-year increase of 22.1%. Within that total, metal technologies are driving most of the value creation as operators print functional components for turbines, reactors, and downhole systems.

Additive manufacturing is moving from trials to central production workflows across the energy sector. The clearest indicator is revenue momentum tied to direct part production rather than prototyping. VoxelMatters’ market data show total spending on AM hardware, materials, and services for energy applications at $581 million in 2023 and $709 million in 2024, a year-over-year increase of 22.1%. Within that total, metal technologies are driving most of the value creation as operators print functional components for turbines, reactors, and downhole systems.

Market data and growth analysis

Hardware is the leading indicator for sustained adoption. Metal hardware revenue increased 24.8% from $202 million in 2023 to $252 million in 2024, reflecting the commissioning of production-grade systems at qualification hubs and operator facilities. The long-term view points to compounded growth as fleets expand and utilization rises, with metal hardware projected to reach $2.1 billion by 2034 on a 23.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

Materials consumption is scaling faster, a sign of serial production. Metal materials revenue rose 48.5% to $44 million in 2024 and is forecast to reach $829 million by 2034 at a 34.2% CAGR, consistent with higher volumes of certified superalloys and stainless steels used for high-temperature, corrosion-resistant duty cycles.

Services remain strategically important for qualification and digital inventory management. In metals, services grew 19.2% to $124 million in 2024 and are projected to reach $2.38 billion by 2034 at a 34.3% CAGR, sustained by improved capabilities in terms of part validation, nondestructive testing, and fleetwide change management. In polymers, services account for nearly 60% of the segment today, rising from $143 million in 2023 to $173 million in 2024, and are expected to total just over $1.1 billion by 2034.

This split mirrors how energy operators apply each technology: metal AM for hot-section and pressure-boundary parts, polymer AM for tooling, aerodynamic test articles, housings, and logistics aids.

Several structural forces explain why energy is scaling faster than adjacent industries. First, the sector operates complex assets under high thermal and mechanical loads with bespoke geometries and long service lives. Obsolescence management is driving AM adoption for legacy nuclear units and mature gas turbines, opening a path for digital re-creation without recasting or hard tooling.

Second, remote and offshore sites elevate the cost of downtime and logistics, making distributed, on-demand manufacturing economically compelling. Third, renewable build-outs and grid-scale storage introduce new form-factor and heat-transfer challenges that benefit significantly from AM’s fluid-/thermo-optimized designs.

How nuclear energy operators are deploying AM

In nuclear energy, additive manufacturing is targeting both life-extension and new-build programs. Westinghouse Electric Company is using additive manufacturing to extend the life of existing plants and build new ones. They have integrated AM into their strategies for fuel and plant parts, installing StrongHold AM debris filters in Nordic boiling water reactors and planning to use. The company operates laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) and hot wire laser welding within its advanced manufacturing portfolio and is building part families that streamline assembly steps while opening design options for flow and debris management.

Framatome has placed multiple AM components in commercial service, including an LPBF stainless-steel fuel component at Vattenfall’s Forsmark Unit 3, and continues to qualify upper tie plate grids and channel hardware for multi-year irradiation programs.

BWX Technologies is developing high-temperature and refractory components with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and exploring binder-jetted fuel forms that can be shaped to meet reactor-specific constraints. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) program refocused from a one-off printed core to industry-ready methods, combining advanced manufacturing, integrated sensing and a digital certification backbone. ORNL’s materials work—ranging from irradiated capsules in 316H stainless steel to tungsten and silicon-carbide studies—supports both fission and fusion pathways.

These efforts align with operators’ near-term needs: reproducing discontinued components and validating new geometries that improve heat transfer, debris filtration, and radiation tolerance without reopening casting lines or requalifying entire assemblies from scratch.

Looking into next gen nuclear fission technology, VoxelMatters had the opportunity to interview James Walker, focusing on the Nano Nuclear’s utilization of additive manufacturing in the development of its reactors. James revelead the types of parts produced using AM, how this technology accelerates development, and its application across NANO Nuclear’s affiliated companies, Advanced Fuel Transportation Inc. (AFT) and HALEU Energy Fuel Inc. (HEF).

AM’s valuable role in global oil & gas

Oil and gas operators are leveraging AM to minimize downtime, speed field repairs, and consolidate parts. ConocoPhillips tested printed burner plugs and valves on Ruston gas turbines in Alaska and used AM to address corrosion in a Canadian water treatment facility while contributing to standards development with the American Petroleum Institute.

Among several initiatives, Shell has used the Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam as a hub for R&D, producing a nickel-718 micromixer with GE Additive (now Colibrium Additive) and, with TEAM and Vallourec, delivering a functional WAAM leak-repair clamp for live service.

Equinor has pursued large-format WAAM and digital warehousing to keep offshore assets running, reporting large printed flanges for marine drive installations and thousands of metal AM components built with recycled powder feedstock in partnership with F3nice.

Baker Hughes has combined research into PEEK filament with production-oriented part consolidation, including a one-piece buffer tube with integrated flow channels designed using Oqton’s manufacturing software. Ever since the AM 2020 event, the company has clearly focused on AM as a key means to achieve its sustainability goals.

Regional ecosystems emerging

Regional AM-centered O&G ecosystems are emerging, especially in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia’s National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Company (NAMI), founded by 3D Systems and Dussur, is building a localized supply network for oil and gas, earning DNV qualification for critical spares and in 2025, signing supply agreements with Baker Hughes, Siemens Energy, and Tasnee.

JOME Engineering shifted stainless-steel valve production from castings to robotic metal 3D printing via Vipra AM, cutting lead times from roughly two months to less than 48 hours and reducing the risk profile of spares management.

Most recently, Roboze and Arab Shipbuilding and Repair Yard (ASRY) began developing an AM smart factory in Bahrain to serve maritime and energy customers with industrial extrusion systems and digital inventory workflows. Cold spray suppliers—including Titomic and SPEE3D—are entering assurance frameworks with DNV and regional partners to qualify coating repairs and near-net builds for corrosive offshore environments.

Making renewables more efficient with AM

Renewables present a different set of constraints, and AM is being applied to both civil structures and hot-section components. GE Vernova and voxeljet co-developed the VX9000, a binder-jetting system capable of printing sand molds up to 9.5 meters to cast massive turbine parts; the first successful castings were completed in 2025 at a Baettr foundry.

National labs and universities are testing recyclable thermoplastics and large-format extrusion for wind blades, with teams at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Virginia Tech and Purdue working on blade modularity, on-site manufacturing, and design iteration speed. In Scotland, Renewable Parts Limited, SSE Renewables and the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland demonstrated remanufacture pathways for wind components using additive processes.

On the thermal side, Siemens Energy’s journey dates to engine-tested printed turbine blades in 2017 and now spans LPBF repairs, WAAM-built features and its proprietary HybridTech repair upgrade for in-service blades, backed by simulation and certification collaborations with Ansys and DNV.

Making nuclear fusion real with AM

Fusion’s commercialization timeline remains uncertain, but additive manufacturing is already part of most private developers’ toolkits. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is pursuing compact tokamaks enabled by high-field superconducting magnets and is collaborating with the UK Atomic Energy Authority toward plant-scale deployment.

Tokamak Energy reported a 100-million-degree-Celsius plasma milestone in a spherical tokamak in 2022, a temperature threshold on the path to net-energy devices. Researchers are using additive manufacturing to create copper-based RF launchers, tungsten parts, and SiC structures for machines that use magnetic confinement, while Chinese institutes have used additive manufacturing to make neutron-resistant steels for protective wall designs.

In field-reversed configuration programs, Helion Energy plans deuterium-helium-3 fuel cycles with pulsed power extraction and has lined up a first-of-its-kind offtake agreement with Microsoft, while TAE Technologies is designing hydrogen-boron systems that trade higher temperature requirements for tritium independence.

Type One Energy is attempting to de-risk stellarator geometry using large-format metal AM to produce complex coil and support structures with the precision the design demands. Another company, Proxima Fusion just raised 130 million euros ($148 million) in a record funding round, with investors hopeful the company can soon develop the world’s first commercial nuclear fusion power plant. The company is using AM to build the first commercial Stellerator.

Traditional fabrication methods struggle with the complex geometries required for stellarator coils and supports. Additive manufacturing bypasses this bottleneck by allowing direct construction of intricate shapes from polymers, composites, or metals with high precision. In developing the UST-2 stellarator, researchers demonstrated that polymer and composite coil frames could be printed and filled with reinforcing resin to achieve tolerances better than 0.3 millimeters. Similarly, tests on EPOS stellarator coils showed that 3D printed aluminum structures could maintain positional accuracy and magnetic performance within predicted ranges.

This article is a modified and online-friendly version of the article that originally appeared in the VoxelMatters Energy AM Focus 2026 eBook, available for free download or online reading at this link.