Just weeks away from the 21st TCT Show + Personalize conference in Birmingham, Rachel Park takes a look at an impressive line-up.

With a long-standing history, today the TCT Show + Personalize is easily the UK’s largest event dedicated to 3D printing and additive manufacturing.

For 21 years the TCT Show has been a beacon of Additive Manufacturing and advanced product development technologies, and for a decade and a half of that I was personally involved.

This time of year inevitably saw my stress levels rising. Even with no involvement whatsoever, I’ve never quite lost that, which is really weird, but true nonetheless.

In the beginning, the dominant event was a conference, supported by a table-top exhibition. There will be a handful of people — maybe slightly more — that remember that format I suspect.

But over more than two decades the event has evolved into a large format exhibition, with additional conference and tutorial features and now includes the consumer demographic, hence the ‘+ personalize’ tagline. Today it is an all-inclusive event catering for all interest — and purchasing — levels.

The opportunity to see and meet with a wide range of suppliers — all under one roof — over one or two days (depending on how much time you can afford), is certainly one of the top reasons to attend such an event, and this year’s TCT event offers a strong exhibitor line-up.

Whether you are interested in metal 3D printing for industrial manufacturing, superior resin, powder or jetting plastic processes, or acquiring a desktop 3D printer, the floorplan is comprehensive in this regard.

The big two 3D printing companies will be represented at TCT. Both Stratasys and 3D Systems have new announcements on the boil — Stratasys revealed its new tech demonstrators last week, stating they will be on show for the first time at IMTS in the US, but they’ll also likely be a talking point for UK visitors a couple of weeks later. Similarly 3D Systems is also making an announcement at IMTS, but will subsequently be at TCT too. The same also goes for German metal AM vendor, EOS.

TCT Show Presentations to Look Out For

One of the greatest opportunities that the TCT Show offers is for networking and learning as it is a great platform for presentations from some of the industry’s leading figures. Presentations given at TCT are spread across two stages — the Main Stage and the Tech Stage.

Some notable highlights among the speakers this year include Consultant Adult Cardiac Surgeon Richard Trimlett from the Royal Brompton Hospital; Alex Berry, the founder of start-up medical device company Sutrue; and Daniel Schneider who is a Technical Sales Manager for Airbus APWorks. Both the medical device and aerospace sectors continue to dominate advanced applications of 3D printing and they are well represented on the TCT conference programme.

Other highlights will likely come from TCT Show favorites David Burns, who is the founder of his new enterprise Global BusinessAdvisory Services, and Todd Grimm, President of T A Grimm & Associates — a 3D printing consultancy service. From experience, Todd’s presentations are not to be missed and always laced with a healthy dose of reality.

Running concurrently with TCT once again will be Inspex, with a focus on metrology technologies and complementing the additive manufacturing focus, but no Interplas this year.

Taking place 28–29^th September, at the NEC in Birmingham, UK visitors to the TCT Show + Personalize will be afforded with many opportunities to get informed and/or updated on all of the latest and greatest developments across the 3D printing industry.

I will be in attendance (note to self, must register) as will representatives from All3DP — so be sure to say hi if you are there too.