Home / 3D Printing Events / 11-ft-tall Aires Tide and 3D printed drones to take spotlight at IMTS 2026 3D Printing Events Aerospace AM Defense Drones/UAV 11-ft-tall Aires Tide and 3D printed drones to take spotlight at IMTS 2026 This September, IMTS 2026 will showcase how AM is supporting the US defense industrial base Tess Boissonneault August 27, 2026 3 minutes read Stay up to date with everything that is happening in the wonderful world of AM via our LinkedIn community. As the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) prepares for its 2026 edition at McCormick Place in Chicago this September, the organizers have given us a sneak peak of what to expect—and it’s going to be big. Inside the event’s AMT Emerging Technology Center (ETC), a number of production processes and applications will be on display that demonstrate the impact that AM is having on the United States’ defense industrial base. Among these will be the 11-foot-tall Aires Tide test flight vehicle and a live 3D printing and demonstration of quadcopter drones. This year the ETC, which will be based inside the North Building at McCormick Place in IMTS booth 236700, will aim to showcase how additive manufacturing and other advanced manufacturing processes are supporting the U.S. industrial base by offering faster, more agile production and decreasing reliance on complex international supply chains. As Douglas K. Woods, president of the Association For Manufacturing Technology (AMT), which owns and produces IMTS, explained, “The ETC demonstrates how we can use new technologies and innovative thinking to strengthen the U.S. industrial base and create surge capacity in times of disruption. What makes the ETC so powerful is that the technologies we need for national defense are the same ones that can make domestic manufacturing more efficient and competitive.” Aires Tide Aires Tide, part of the DOE’s Genesis Mission , will be a key draw for visitors. At 11 feet tall, Aires Tide is a full-scale proof-of-concept test flight vehicle developed using a combination of AI, advanced computing, and metal additive manufacturing. (Specifically, the large-scale vessel is constructed using Velo3D’s Sapphire XC 3D printer and Inconel 718.) Thanks to the combination of these technologies, the development of the Aires Tide has been dramatically accelerated (by about seven times) compared to using traditional manufacturing. The project has also reportedly been about 15 times less expensive. “We went from a concept in October to a test flight in May, and the DOE is excited,” said Lonnie Love, Ph.D., fellow at Sandia National Laboratories, which led the Aires Tide project. “We demonstrated a framework in which we can develop new designs and test them in weeks or months rather than years.” The test flight he refers to was conducted on May 19, 2026, when a half-scale Aires Tide vehicle was dropped from 32,000 feet at the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.