Around 150 industry professionals discussed the current state of Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) at WAAMathon #3 on June 11, 2026, in Berlin. The conference, organized by Berlin.Industrial.Group. (B.I.G.), made one thing clear: technical feasibility was no longer the focus — industrial implementation was. Contributions from industry and research showed that WAAM's further market ramp-up will depend primarily on qualification, standardization, and digital process chains. In many application fields, the technology has by now grown beyond the demonstrator phase. The discussion increasingly centered on how WAAM can be reproducibly qualified, standardized, and integrated into industrial value chains.
"The challenge for WAAM is no longer to prove that the technology works. Rather, it is about building the industrial trust required for broad adoption. This trust will come from internationally aligned standards, qualification procedures, digital records, robust economic analyses, and close collaboration within the industry — not from isolated, proprietary individual solutions," says Carl Hauser, ASTM International / Wohlers Associates
Bottleneck Qualification: The Constraint No Longer Lies in the Technology
Differing qualification approaches, a lack of comparability between applications, and inconsistent data structures are seen as key obstacles to the industrial scaling of WAAM. It was also emphasized that the adoption of additive manufacturing often fails less because of technical limits than because of insufficient trust and acceptance within companies.
Industrial reproducibility begins with the raw material. The example of titanium wire illustrates the influence material quality has on process stability and component properties. According to speakers, market ramp-up is not determined solely by the performance of individual machines, but by the ability to make processes, materials, and test criteria traceable and reproducible.
"We often see a paradoxical situation: the purely technical feasibility of a component has long been proven, but the investment decision within companies keeps getting postponed. Why? Because the various decision-making groups in the company don't yet believe the story. Trust in reproducibility is the new criterion for market success," reports Carl Fruth, CEO FIT AG.
Algorithms Instead of Trial-and-Error: Digitalizing the Weld Pool
A central trend is the growing digitalization of process development. Artificial intelligence, simulation, and data-based models are helping to replace the often labor-intensive trial-and-error approach previously used in process development.
Just a few years ago, the development of new WAAM processes relied largely on empirical knowledge and extensive test series. This approach is changing rapidly: AI-supported models, simulations, and data-based assistance systems are expected to help determine process parameters faster, predict errors early, and improve the transferability of process knowledge.
Concrete approaches range from AI- and thermomechanical simulation-based methods for faster determination of suitable process parameters, to agentic systems and generative AI for automated process planning, to real-time weld pool monitoring techniques. As varied as these solutions are, they address the same challenge: making process knowledge digitally available and systematically usable.
WAAM Leaves the Niche
WAAM's range of applications has expanded considerably in recent years — from aerospace to energy and rail technology to construction and maritime structures. Notably, many projects no longer aim purely at proof-of-concept demonstrations but focus on concrete industrial questions.
Examples include titanium components for aerospace applications, additively manufactured grid fins with complex geometries for rockets, and the path toward series production of steam turbine blades as highly stressed components. In rail transport, WAAM is being qualified for the long-term supply of spare parts. Topics such as material efficiency and sustainability in construction, as well as architectural structures for cruise ships, further illustrate that WAAM is increasingly being considered for application fields that go far beyond the classic domains of additive metal manufacturing.
From Technology to Industrial System
Discussions are increasingly shifting away from the manufacturing process itself toward the industrial environment required for widespread adoption of the technology. The challenge is thus moving more and more from process development to the system level.
While the early years of technology development were often dominated by questions of build rates, materials, or process stability, focus today has shifted toward data management, simulation, material quality, qualification, and standardization. This shifts attention increasingly from the individual machine to the entire process chain. Whether in automated parameterization, digital process monitoring, the qualification of spare parts for rail transport, or the production of safety-critical components for energy and aerospace applications: industrial usability depends more and more on the interplay of different disciplines.
WAAM is thus increasingly evolving from a single manufacturing technology into an industrial system in which material suppliers, software providers, machine builders, users, and standardization organizations must work closely together.
Standardization as a Shared Task
Representatives from industry and standardization bodies agree that harmonized standards and robust qualification processes are a key prerequisite for the further spread of the technology. It was repeatedly pointed out that companies, especially in regulated and safety-critical sectors, need reliable evidence before additive processes can be transferred into series production.
At the same time, it became clear that existing regulatory frameworks in many areas have not yet kept pace with the speed of technological development. Standardization therefore remains a shared task that can only succeed through the active involvement of users, technology providers, research institutions, and standardization organizations.
From Process Development to System Integration
WAAM has already proven its industrial usability across numerous applications. The discussion is thus shifting: the question is no longer whether the technology works, but how it can be integrated into industrial production environments reliably, economically, and across sectors.
Source: Berlin.Industrial.Group.
