Quick Summary
• Metal additive manufacturing (AM) systems generally utilize lasers with spot sizes that fall into a range of 80 micrometers (μm) to 100μm, although dynamic beam shaping may soon lead to...
Additional Context
Metal additive manufacturing (AM) systems generally utilize lasers with spot sizes that fall into a range of 80 micrometers (μm) to 100μm, although dynamic beam shaping may soon lead to spot sizes larger than 100µm being more and more commonplace. At the same time, meanwhile, there’s reason to think that smaller spot sizes could make a comeback, as well.
The Chinese AM OEM Farsoon, for one, is leveraging lasers with spot sizes of 40µm to enable what the company is calling its Fine Laser Spot metal AM process, which it announced last year. Leading up to RAPID + TCT 2026 in Boston, Farsoon gave an update on the process that illustrates just how quickly it’s scaling deployment of smaller spot sizes for industrial production.
In 2025, when the company originally announced the 40µm solution (