3D Printing News Briefs, May 14, 2025: Thermal Solutions, Food Safety, & More

In today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, Meltio announced a new sales partner in the Benelux region, and Eplus3D is helping TEMISTh to revolutionize metal additive manufacturing in thermal solutions. Moving on, Replique was nominated for the German Founder Award. Finally, researchers from China developed a portable 3D printed lab-on-a-chip device that can quickly and accurately detect pesticides in food.

Meltio Adds Sales Partner in Benelux Metal AM Market

Spanish multinational Meltio, which specializes in wire laser metal deposition (W-LMD), has announced a new sales partner for the Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg region. ProductionToGo Benelux will work to build a strong ecosystem for Meltio’s technology across the Benelux countries. Meltio offers a variety of AM solutions for industrial production needs, supply chains, and machine shops, including the Meltio Robot Cell, Meltio M600, Meltio Engine integration kit for industrial robots, and Meltio Engine integration kit for vertical machining centers. Its process is built around welding wire, which is said to be the most affordable, safest, and cleanest metal feedstock.

As a sales partner, ProductionToGo Benelux will partner with academia, technology centers, industry, robotic integrators, and tooling machine companies to distribute, support, and drive business opportunities for Meltio’s metal AM solutions in the Benelux market.

“We are thrilled to be working with and this collaboration between ProductionToGo Benelux us serves as a great indicator of how Meltio’s partner ecosystem and our unique wire-laser metal 3D printing technology for industries is evolving in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg markets both our industrial wire-laser metal Additive Manufacturing solutions in the center of Europe,” said Francisco González, Head of EMEA at Meltio.

“Together, we will be able to cater to the ever-growing interest in Meltio’s technology and its applications for industries such as automotive, aerospace, defense, oil & gas, mining, energy and many others and reliable metal applications.”

TEMISTh Partners with Eplus3D to Advance Metal AM for Thermal Solutions

French company TEMISTh, which designs and manufactures customized heat exchangers, has partnered with Eplus3D to redefine metal AM for its thermal solutions in the aerospace, defense, and energy industries. TEMISTh specializes in extreme-condition applications, including high-pressure environments and cryogenic systems, and has now adopted Eplus3D’s Metal Powder Bed Fusion (MPBF) technology. The EP-M300 features dual 500W lasers, a 300x300x450 mm build volume, and combines FEA-validated mechanical designs with CFD-driven fluid dynamics, allowing for the production of complex, lightweight heat exchangers with optimized internal flow channels. A major application of their collaboration is the DESOLINATION initiative, which is working to revolutionize water desalination by integrating Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) with advanced thermal exchange technology. Intricate geometries are needed to optimize heat transfer between supercritical CO2 and a highly concentrated desalination solution, which is why TEMISTh used Eplus3D’s EP-M300 to print IN718 nickel-alloy heat exchanger cores with a 50μm layer thickness. The build was completed within 130 hours of continuous printing, and heat treatment got the cores to a material density exceeding 99.9% density. Rigorous DESOLINATION testing confirmed the performance alignment and structural integrity of the heat exchangers.

“Combining TEMISTh’s expertise in heat exchanger engineering with the precision and stability of our metal 3D printer unlocks new possibilities for advanced thermal management,” said Martin Bizot, Account Manager at Eplus3D Tech GmbH. “This synergy will drive high-performance solutions that support economically viable decarbonization, redefining the future of energy-efficient industries.”

Replique Nominated for German Founder Award in StartUp Category

On-demand industrial manufacturing platform Replique announced that it has been nominated in the “StartUp” category for the prestigious German Founder 2025 (Deutscher Gründerpreis) Award. Supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and presented by partners Sparkassen, ZDF, Porsche, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the award recognizes companies between one and three years old which have successfully brought their business idea to market; this makes Replique one of the more promising startups in Germany. The BASF spin-out was founded in 2023 by Dr. Henrike Wonneberger and Dr. Max Siebert in order to give companies an easier, more secure way to source industrial parts. Leveraging their expertise in digitalization and materials science, they came up with a solution that makes part procurement cost-efficient, simpler, and risk-free. With its digital inventory, 500+ materials, and more than 250 production partners, Replique enables on-demand and decentralized production of small to medium series, spare parts, and specialized components.

“We’re in an exciting phase of growth right now. Being nominated by the jury of the German Founder Award as one of the most promising startups is a strong signal for industrial and tech startups that are shaping the digital transformation. It proves that our procurement solution is hitting the mark at exactly the right moment,” said Dr. Siebert, Co-Founder and CEO of Replique.

The 2025 German Founder Award ceremony will be held at the ZDF main studio in Berlin on September 9th.

Portable 3D Printed Lab-on-a-Chip Device Detects Pesticides in Food

Due to its high efficiency, broad-spectrum effectiveness, and lower toxicity to mammals, the insecticide thiamethoxam has often been used for pest control where food is grown. However, studies found it can have negative effects on pollinators that the chemical wasn’t even targeting in the first place. The EU has even banned outdoor applications of thiamethoxam, but its residue is still being detected in samples of honey, pollen, and okra. Some instrumental methods, like gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), have been used to accurately determine thiamethoxam levels in food, but pricey equipment and lengthy sample pre-treatment processes are required. So a team of researchers from Zhejiang University, the Chinese Academy of Forestry, and the Ningbo Academy of Agricultural Sciences set out to develop less expensive, but still effective and sensitive, analytical methods for monitoring the insecticide on-site for the purposes of food safety. As they explain in their paper, the researchers 3D printed “a miniaturized lab-on-a-chip (LOC) device for in-situ sample pretreatment.” A sandwich-like reaction zone for sample purification and filtration was manually added to the 3D printed LOC, and an immunochromatographic strip analyzed food samples for thiamethoxam residue. The device was successfully applied to 13 different types of food samples, and produced analytic results within 15 minutes.

“Using these components, a multi-flow analysis approach that integrates in-situ sample pretreatment and on-site pesticide residue analysis was established. Furthermore, the effectiveness, accuracy and sensitivity of the composite LOC device were assessed through matrix interference evaluation and spiking recovery tests. Finally, the developed LOC device was applied to monitor thiamethoxam residues in real unknown agricultural food samples, and the results were validated using instrumental LC-MS/MS reference method,” the team wrote.