Hardware Podcasts

When Production Overtakes Prototyping: Materialise’s Next Phase of AM

Additive Snack · 13 Oct 2026 · 1h 02m · Episode 44

AI in practice: 2 real uses of AI described

What this episode covers

Bart van der Schuren, CTO of Materialise, explains how the company transitioned from a 1995 service bureau to a production powerhouse, recently surpassing prototyping with serial manufacturing. He details the three pillars of Materialise—manufacturing, software, and medical applications—and highlights rapid adoption in hearing aids, dental, and drones, contrasted with the slow, recertification-heavy aerospace sector. Van der Schuren argues that AI-driven automation and in-situ quality control are critical for reducing New Product Introduction (NPI) costs and scaling production in regulated industries.

AI in practice

Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.

Engineering & simulationMaterialise AI agents / APIsone day to build a new application

Materialise wrapped its SD case (MagicScript) in APIs and fed them into AI agents to automatically generate automation scripts for custom applications, reducing development time from hours/days to a few hours.

“we put that as an inputs into AI agents. And then you can just ask to build automation scripts. And there is something, you know, measure script, something you do in a couple of minutes to a few hours. So basically we have already been demonstrating that in, in one day, we can build a new application with customization.”

Bart Van Der Schueren · Hear it at 34:01

Design

AI is used to accelerate simulation processes and provide insights into the independence of designs, helping engineers understand how parts will behave before production.

“simulation as well will be accelerated with AI. Yeah, I see this well in how we are using AI. Uh, it's, it's, it's helping in an accelerating simulation, um, and in, in, like, so it, in how we can get insights, independentability of designs, for example, you know?”

Bart Van Der Schueren · Hear it at 38:49

Most relevant to

companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Materialise, Siemens, Phonak, SpaceX, Boom Supersonic
Products
Mimics, Magics, Quorum
Also
KU Leuven

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