Post-Printing at RAPID 2026: PostProcess Technologies & Mass Finishing​3DPrint.com | Additive Manufacturing Business

The whole 3D printing workflow was on display in Boston at RAPID+TCT last week, from design software and 3D printing hardware all the way to post-processing and finishing solutions. For years, the latter has been brushed aside, not talked about, hidden away as the industry’s “dirty little secret.”

PostProcess Technologies

As Jeff Mize, CEO of PostProcess Technologies, once told us, the company is working to change this narrative with its automated solutions.

Stratasys & Unified Workflows

PostProcess is most aligned with Stratasys, which Mize calls the company’s “primary partner.” Its solutions work “with four of the five core technologies” that Stratasys offers, including FDM, SLA, PolyJet, and P3. One of its newer systems is the DEMI X 5000, a large-format resin removal machine that works with the Stratasys Neo800+.

“So the DEMI 4100 was the first generation for large-format resin removal, pairing with the Neo800+ and other large-format printers. For the DEMI X 5000, we’ve learned a lot from having the DEMI 4100 installed for a number of years, and for a number of challenging applications, including at Formula 1 teams.”

PostProcess used feedback from the Formula 1 teams to inform its enhancements to the DEMI 5000, like “greater agitation to be able to work with convex and concave parts.”

While PostProcess works with many 3D printer OEMs, like 3D Systems and 3DCERAM, Stratasys is definitely its number one. Their recently announced partnership, which Mize calls “a major milestone,” partially came about because the DEMI 4100 was installed at Stratasys Direct Manufacturing (SDM) in Tucson, Arizona and used “day in and day out.” Then, the BASE system for automated FDM support removal was brought to SDM.

“So there was great success at Stratasys Direct, along with their Customer Experience Centers in Minnesota and Germany,” Mize said. “They had firsthand experience with our solutions, and as importantly, they heard from hundreds of our joint customers, that this post-processing solution drives a significant increase in consistency, much more throughput, and gives a lower cost per part.”

More importantly, many of these customers just want a unified workflow.

“I thought we would need to get into production applications to really be able to scale the business, but we’re seeing the need even in prototyping applications,” Mize told me. “We do see production applications on the near-term horizon. And there, automated post-printing isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have.”

Partnerships like the one PostProcess has with Stratasys are also helpful because it’s simpler to have the 3D printer and post-print solution come together on one quote. Mize said that Dallas Martin, Additive Manufacturing Engineer at Toyota North America, was one of the biggest proponents for simplifying things in this way.

“From a technology perspective, having a unified solution is critical, but also from a commercial perspective,” Mize said. “It’s easier to place one PO instead of having to work with two different companies.”

Safety in Post-Printing

We then moved on to safety, which Mize said “is driving probably 50% of our conversations today.”

While he wasn’t able to name names due to NDAs, Mize did note that PostProcess is working with top companies in some of the main sectors, like aerospace, automotive, medical, and consumer goods. In fact, the company’s largest customer, a leading consumer goods company, just purchased its 25th and 26th systems from PostProcess this quarter.

Working with such big names, safety is “a critical part of the discussion.” Mize actually said he heard from the head of safety at one of the company’s major aerospace customers that because “the next generation really cares about safe work environments,” safety is now being used as a recruiting tool.

Some of its aerospace and automotive customers have banned the use of open chemical dunk tanks for resin removal, as Mize said they’ve resulted in accidents at some companies. He also said that medical companies are even starting to ban isopropyl alcohol (IPA).

“Because our solutions are safer, from the design of the machines and how the software works, and then probably most importantly the chemistry, overall we’re providing a safer work environment, which is critical for everyone. But in particular, aerospace and automotive and medical are driving this.”

PostProcess developed an alternative to IPA for resin removal called PLM-403, as well as a rinse agent called AUX-400. So the company now offers a completely IPA-free workflow.

Solution Utilization

The third point Mize touched on during our discussion was how customers are using PostProcess Technologies’ solutions.

“Our recurring consumable business is growing very rapidly, and is actually ahead of plan,” he said. “Customers that have our solutions are using them on a very regular basis. So we’re seeing print volumes increasing and the post-print utilization increasing.”

Earlier this year, the company published its 2026 Additive Post-Processing Survey Trends Report, which outlines customer concerns, and the post-processing bottleneck was high on the list. Mize said that over the years, the survey consistently shows that “customers no longer want to piecemeal the solutions together part by part.”

“It was reinforced through our survey that customers want these unified solutions,” Mize explained. “They want a safer environment, they need more consistent parts, higher throughput at a lower total cost of ownership. And then one other caveat is don’t affect the material properties.”

To this end, Mize quickly explained that another perk of the company’s partnership with Stratasys is working more closely with their material science teams, “so that as we’re developing next generation chemistries, we understand at a molecular level what the print materials are made of.”

In terms of specific customer applications, Mize mentioned that PostProcess Technologies has had success with several dental companies, including the Ninety! Dental Production Center in France, which is a customer of both Stratasys and PostProcess.

“The senior leadership at Ninety! said, we want to have a unified workflow because our volumes are increasing,” Mize said. “So we’ll work closely with Stratasys on their next-generation dental solutions. It’s not just a printer offering, it’s a unified workflow offering.”

Mass Finishing, Inc. (MFI)

Speaking of dental 3D printing, I noticed that this is also a specific application for the new HZ-6 centrifugal barrel finishing machine, which Mass Finishing, Inc. (MFI) debuted at RAPID. But it’s not at all similar to PostProcessing Technologies’ resin removal solutions.

Centrifugal Barrel Finishers

MFI manufactures surface finishing equipment and supplies, specializing in high-energy centrifugal barrel tumblers, like the compact HZ-6, that can quickly deburr and polish 3D printed metals, plastics, and other materials.

As MFI’s Outside Sales Representative Mike Marketon explained, “Basically, we can take parts from a really rough state, and polish them and clean up.”

This type of finishing uses centrifugal force (outward force on a mass when it’s rotated) to, as MFI’s brochure explained, “subject parts and media to pressures greater than the force of gravity.” The barrels on these machines are loaded with a combination of water, parts, media, and compound. As the machine rotates, the barrels spin on their own axis, and a sliding force is created inside the barrels, which causes everything inside to hit each other in random directions.

There are many versions of these kinds of machines, from smaller vibratory bowls and tubs that rotate in just one direction to centrifugal barrel tumblers with four barrels. The HZ-6 is MFI’s most compact system yet, with a footprint of less than six square feet and only two barrels, which can accommodate parts up to 8″ long and 4.5″ in diameter. For comparison, Marketon said the company’s HZ-330 machine “would take up this whole booth and then some.”

MFI’s centrifugal barrel tumblers can reach up to 12 Gs of force inside, and a urethane liner in the barrels keeps the parts from getting too beat up.

“The turret itself is going one direction, and the barrels actually go the other direction,” Marketon explained. “So it’s doubling that force when they’re rotating different directions like that. So that’s basically what it does to generate power to go from rough surfaces to a polished surface.”

I asked about the level of automation for MFI’s centrifugal barrel tumblers, and Marketon said that while loading and unloading is manual, the rest of the process is pretty hands-off. The company develops the specific recipe for customer parts, and once these have been added, you “basically plug it in, push the button, and walk away.” You will need to unload and reload the parts when you switch media materials, like going from a pre-polish media to one for mirror-finish polishing, but it’s better than the alternative.

“It’s a lot less time-consuming than people who have to hand-polish,” Marketon said. “Somebody’s standing there with a buffing wheel or something like that, it takes hours upon hours to get one part done. We can usually bring that down to a third or less.”

Compact HZ-6

Looking more closely at the new HZ-6, MFI states that it’s “the smallest industrial high-energy tumbler on the market.” Its caster wheels make the machine easy to transport, and I can personally attest that it’s also very quiet, operating around the same level as a dishwasher would. Marketon said it would be “an easy unit to have in a facility, dental lab, or medical lab.”

Standing at just over three feet tall, it has two barrel positions, each of which can hold either two half-sized barrels or one full-sized barrel. The half-sized barrels are good for heavy loads, high-mix production, and larger parts, while the full-sized barrels are for long production runs, one high-volume part, or several small, lightweight parts.

Post-processing and finishing solutions, like the ones offered by PostProcess Technologies and MFI, should be at the forefront in all of our minds. What happens to 3D printed parts once they come off the printer is just as important as designing them for the printer, and the actual printing process itself.

Images courtesy of Sarah Saunders for 3DPrint.com