The future of manufacturing is local and connected — meet Caracol at Formnext 2026!

Marine drone, produced with Mirai

On the water, a heavy hull means less range, so weight was the first thing Mirai had to fight. They printed this drone with robotic LFAM in a fiber-reinforced material, light but stiff enough to take the waves. The shape came straight from the file, and the next one can change without anyone having to build a new mold first.

Impeller, developed for MTC

Look closely at the blades and you can still guess the layers. This impeller was made with MTC leveraging Vipra AM WAAM process, deposited in metal until it was almost the finished part. Starting that close to the final shape means far less material ends up as chips on the floor, and nobody has to wait weeks for a foundry.

Marine propeller by JOME Engineering

The client had the old propeller and nothing else, no drawings, no CAD. So JOME scanned it and printed a new one in SS316L on Vipra AM, in Dubai, a short trip from the boat it went back on. Skipping the die and the foundry took roughly 60% off the lead time and about 40% off the cost.

Direct mold for carbon fiber lamination

In motorsport, carbon parts change almost every season, and every change used to mean a new mold, plus the master needed to make it. This one skips that step. Printed with robotic LFAM in a high-performance composite, then machined to the right finish, it goes straight to lamination. Fewer stages, much less waiting, and when the design moves on, so does the mold.

The 3D Bar

Run a hand along the counter and there isn’t a straight edge anywhere. That’s the whole point of this bar, a completely custom piece printed with robotic LFAM, big curves and all. Building something like this by hand would need molds for every section. Here it took a file and a robot, and it can be printed again whenever someone wants a different version.

The Network Effect

Tuesday 17 November · h 16:00

A conversation across industries that rarely share a stage. Moderated by Francesco De Stefano, CEO & Co-founder at Caracol AM, the panel looks at what happens when production moves into a network of connected microfactories: how it reshapes the way things get made, sold and scaled, and where the model still has room to grow.

Inside a microfactory

Wednesday 18 November - Morning

One of the largest LFAM microfactories out there, with robotic cells printing production parts day in, day out. The team behind it walks through how it grew from a first concept into a real factory, including a few decisions they’d make differently today.

Scaling without building everything yourself

Wednesday 18 November - Morning

A clear market, products that already sell. The harder question is how to expand without opening every new factory on your own. Producing closer to clients, with partners who work to the same standards, turns out to be a big part of the answer.

From idea to application

Wednesday 18 November - Afternoon

Between a promising prototype and a part you can produce in volume there’s a lot of testing, validation and the occasional dead end. This session sits right in that gap, with real examples of applications that made it through, and some that didn’t.

When parts have to last

Thursday 19 November - Afternoon

Certifications, safety requirements, components expected to stay in service for decades. In regulated sectors like rail, additive parts have to earn their place. A concrete talk on what it really takes to get printed components approved and in use.