America Makes names JAQS-SQ winners as Axtra3D expands dental materials

Continuous fiber reinforcement was the loudest signal in this batch of 3D printing news: BigRep and Endless Industries turned a two-year integration effort into a long-term technology partnership built around the BigRep IPSO 105, with the companies saying the system can produce mechanically reinforced parts with up to 20x higher strength than unreinforced thermoplastics. That is the kind of number that changes where additive manufacturing can actually compete, especially when the pitch is not just “stronger part,” but stronger part without jumping straight to the capital cost of traditional automated fiber placement.

The same materials-first mindset showed up in defense manufacturing. America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining named Group 1 winners of the $1.7 million Joint Additive Qualification for Sustainment, Supplier Qualification Project Call, funded through the Office of the Under Secretary of War, Manufacturing Technology Office. The six suppliers named were 3D Systems, Alloyed, Howco Additive, Rennscot, Velo3D and Divergent Technologies. The point of the program is straightforward: pull non-traditional suppliers into the qualification pipeline faster, improve process control document readiness, and chip away at the part-by-part qualification bottleneck that still slows additive adoption in defense.

Axtra3D kept the focus on performance, but moved it into dental production. The company said it was partnering with Keystone Industries to validate KeyOrtho Model, KeyGuide, KeySplint Hard Clear, KeySplint Soft and KeySplint Soft Clear on the Lumia X1 platform, while also launching KeyModel Ultra, an ultra-fast printing resin built with a thermoforming quick-release agent. That combination matters because dental labs do not buy resin for branding, they buy it for clean pull-off behavior, fast turnaround and fewer headaches when mold forming and carving have to happen all day.

Bioprinting is climbing the same ladder, just in a much harder arena. A Science Advances paper published May 8, 2026 described a digitally light-processed ultrabiomimetic trachea for segmental airway reconstruction, with anatomically biomimetic C-shaped cartilage rings, alternating fibrous rings and dorsal fibrous bands. The team, including Jingming Gao, Bohui Li, Zheng Ci, Xingqi Song, Jie Zhu, Liang Duan, Xiaoyun Wang, Yu Liu, Dong Lei and Guangdong Zhou, also built in a stress-relaxing alginate-based hydrogel with VEGF loading and sustained release, plus vascular channels that drove a 2.6-fold increase in neovascular density versus scaffolds without channels. In rabbit end-to-end anastomosis experiments, the vascularized grafts showed better survival and functional integration.

That is the common thread running through this roundup: the ceiling is moving where the material itself does the hard work, whether the goal is a fiber-reinforced production part, a better dental resin, or a trachea that can actually take root.