After five consecutive years in Chicago, the Additive Manufacturing Users Group packed up and headed west. AMUG 2026 took place in Reno, Nevada, a city which sits within reasonable driving distance of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, positioning the event closer to a dense concentration of technology companies, investors, and advanced manufacturing operations.
The city is also in the middle of a genuine growth phase: a revitalized downtown with quality dining and cultural events, proximity to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and a growing industrial footprint, most visibly anchored by Tesla’s Gigafactory, make it a destination for industry gatherings.
That said, attendees who found themselves drawn more to the mountains than the casino floor may have wished the surrounding program leaned further into Reno’s outdoor and cultural offer. It is a fair note for future editions.
What remained constant was the quality of the event itself. The sessions were highly educational and technically substantive, and the networking opportunities were, by most accounts, among the most valuable the event has offered. AMUG has always been defined less by its location than by the community it brings together, and 2026 was no exception.
Among the conversations worth listening to was the one forming around Divergent Technologies and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI). Their partnership offers one of the most instructive case studies in what it actually looks like to move additive manufacturing from concept to structural production hardware in aerospace and defense.
Divergent’s approach was originally developed for automotive structures, an environment defined by cost pressure, volume, and performance requirements that are demanding in their own right.
What has become increasingly clear is how much of that foundation translates to aerospace and defense, where complexity, lightweighting, and supply chain agility are no less critical. Scott Sawyer, who leads partnerships at Divergent, spoke directly to which elements of the company’s manufacturing philosophy proved transferable, and which required rethinking.
On the customer side, Steve Fournier from GA-ASI reflected on what it meant to encounter Divergent’s technology for the first time: specifically, how it challenged long-held assumptions about how aircraft and drone structures should be designed and built.
These are the kinds of exchanges AMUG is built for: direct, technically grounded, and between people who are actually doing the work.
Watch the video:
With the idea of knowledge transfer between industries, Steve Fournier, Technical Director of the Additive Design & Manufacturing Center of Excellence at GA-ASI will be back on April 22, 15:30–16:30 CEST | 09:30–10:30 EDT, Additive Talks, season 6. Alongside Hauke Schulz, AM Roadmap Leader at Airbus, they will discuss how civil aviation, aerospace & defense – two leaders from two industries that rarely talk to each other – approach AM: the convergence, where the gap shows up and the pathway to qualification frameworks.
Video produced by Ian Von Herbulis.
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