Blue Origin & Auburn University Use EOS M290 to Study Copper 3D Printing

Blue Origin, the commercial space company built off of investments from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated two EOS M290 powder bed fusion (PBF) printers to Auburn University’s National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME), so that the latter can contribute to the improvement of copper printing processes. In January, 2025, Blue Origin became the first “new space” company to successfully reach orbit on its first launch, sending its New Glenn rocket into space from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Auburn University has long played a significant role in helping advance the AM industry, including an R&D relationship with NASA that goes back over a decade. Notably, one of the alloys that NCAME will be studying, copper-chromium-niobium (GRCop-42), was originally developed by NASA.

EOS has demonstrated increasing competence with developing copper alloys for its platforms, including EOS CopperAlloy CuNi30, created in partnership with Phillips Federal and Austal USA in connection with work for the US submarine industrial base. EOS and AMCM have also partnered with the UK’s University of Wolverhampton to establish a UK center of excellence dedicated to copper AM.

In a press release about Blue Origin’s donation of two EOS M290 printers to Auburn University’s NCAME, the director of NCAME, Nima Shamsaei, said, “Copper’s high reflectivity presents challenges for traditional laser-based 3D printing systems to effectively melt and fuse the powder, as much of the laser energy is reflected. We already had two EOS M290s, but these new additions will allow us to expedite the sort of applied research that can support Blue Origin’s needs for this alloy.”

NCAME research scientist Jonathan Pegues added, “Copper also has high thermal conductivity, which makes melting even more inefficient. Once it finally melts, absorptivity increases and leads to inconsistent melt pool behavior and potential defects in the printed part. Specialized laser systems that couple better with copper are often needed to overcome these challenges, but certain alloys like GRCop-42 have proven to be printable with standard IRF lasers, like those integrated in the EOS M290.”

New space has been having another “moment” thanks to the return to the White House by President Trump, founding father of the Space Force. There is reason to believe that this moment will be more than just momentary, as a variety of catalysts for Trump’s reshoring goals converge in the space industry.

More so than any particular technology or application, space industry AM activity could play its biggest role in accelerating R&D into material feedstocks, as the Blue Origin/NCAME story illustrates. R&D into copper, in particular, could easily emerge as a winner for the AM industry, as tariff threats have lately caused renewed resurgence in the price of the metal.

With that in mind, the relatively small number of companies with proficiency in printing copper could be among the biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s ongoing, increasingly confusing trade war policies, to the extent that end-users ultimately find it easier to build up their domestic copper production capabilities, than it is to continue to rely on imported copper parts. Trump has, rather astonishingly, only been back in office for two months at this point, but there already does seem to be some truth to the notion that his administration’s policies will speed up the reshoring efforts initiated by previous presidencies (including his own).