3D People Automates Build Preparation With AMIS Runtime at London Facility

3D People has deployed AMIS Runtime across its London production facility, automating the entire build preparation pipeline for its polymer powder bed fusion operations. The rollout integrates scripted workflows covering file import, repair, intelligent nesting, slicing, and export, with continuous re-nesting keeping batches current as job priorities shift.

The deployment follows a 2025 grant from the UK's Made Smarter initiative, which funded development of an automated process for preparing, nesting, and scheduling 3D print builds. AMIS and 3D People collaborated on development and real-world testing across the London facility before the full rollout, with validation demonstrating consistent results across both SLS and MJF systems.

AMIS Runtime slots into 3D People's existing manufacturing execution system rather than replacing it, translating production rules into programmable workflows that generate optimized build jobs automatically. The system's Q\Nest feature produces high-density builds with consistent rules applied across every operator and every shift, which matters enormously in a high-mix, high-volume environment where manual nesting quality would otherwise vary person to person.

Felix Manley, co-founder of 3D People, put the operational case plainly: "AMIS Runtime is a perfect complement to how we manufacture. Our production relies on consistency and the ability to respond quickly when priorities change. Runtime lets us automate the repetitive tasks, so our team can focus on engineering, quality and customer support."

The London facility produces end-use PA12, TPU, and engineered polymer parts for customers in automotive, marine, robotics, electronics, and film and TV. Those sectors increasingly demand shorter lead times and repeatable manufacturing at scale, from prototypes up to thousands of parts on demand. 3D People recently expanded the facility with new SLS capacity and additional material offerings, and the Runtime deployment is reported to have eliminated bottlenecks previously tied to manual build preparation, delivering higher build value, lower cost per part, reduced machine downtime, and improved right-first-time rates, according to Eureka magazine's coverage of the rollout.

Kris Binon, Managing Director at AMIS, which is based in Gent, Belgium, credited the collaborative development process for making Runtime production-ready: "3D People represents exactly the type of partner Runtime was built for. They're fast, industrially focused and committed to quality. Their input during development helped shape Runtime into a practical tool for their real production environment, not just a lab experiment."

For AM service bureaus running SLS or MJF at any meaningful volume, the manual build-prep step has always been the unglamorous bottleneck: a technician staring at a nest, making judgment calls that the next technician on the next shift might make differently. What 3D People has done here is codify those decisions into programmable rules and hand the repetitive execution to software. The long-term digital manufacturing strategy TCT Magazine described, building on an existing MES platform rather than swapping it out, is the kind of incremental but compounding approach that scales without disruption.