Some of the most productive conversations in industrial technology don't happen at trade shows or in conference rooms — they happen on the factory floor. That's exactly where we hosted approximately 20 additive manufacturing experts from the SNCF group, who made the trip to Strasbourg to spend a full day at the Lines Manufacturing facility in Eschau.
The visit was structured around the intersection of two areas where Lines has built deep expertise: large-format additive manufacturing and rail applications. SNCF's additive manufacturing team is one of the most sophisticated in the French industrial landscape — they think rigorously about which technologies are genuinely production-ready, which applications generate real operational value, and which claims don't survive contact with industrial reality.
We designed the day to match that level of rigour. The programme included a workshop focused on large-dimension parts and their production challenges, a structured exchange of application cases, and a guided tour of our production equipment — including our FGF systems, material handling infrastructure, and post-processing capabilities.
The workshop sessions generated genuinely rich technical dialogue. SNCF's experts brought their own catalogue of challenges — renovation programmes, spare parts with obsolete tooling, structural components requiring complex geometries at low volumes — and Lines' team engaged with those cases directly, discussing feasibility, material compatibility, cycle times, and cost structures.
Several themes emerged as particularly compelling for the rail sector:
– Spare parts on demand: The ability to produce certified replacement parts for rolling stock without maintaining physical tooling inventory.
– Interior components: Large polymer panels, covers, and housings where additive manufacturing can replace complex moulding processes.
– Tooling and jigs: Production aids that benefit from rapid iteration and customisation.
– Renovation and retrofit programmes: New parts for vehicles being refurbished, where original moulds no longer exist.
Visits like this one are about far more than a single afternoon of conversations. They are about building the kind of mutual technical understanding that makes real industrial partnerships possible. When an SNCF engineer and a Lines engineer have stood in front of the same machine, discussed the same production challenge, and stress-tested assumptions together, the foundation for serious project collaboration is in place.
We are grateful to the SNCF additive manufacturing team for the investment of their time and expertise. We look forward to the next steps together.
