John has a 25+ year career in product development and aerospace with Honeywell, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works™, Australia’s CSIRO, and Arconic. He’s been involved in metal additive manufacturing (AM) throughout his career since the late 1990s when he was part of the Sandia National Labs LENS™ CRADA. Since then, he has been in and around AM, working on technical and business cases for implementation and development efforts in materials, powders, processing, and printing to mature the technology for applications. John is recognized internationally for contributions to additive manufacturing, product development, and leadership in engineering.

John is a Materials Engineer by background but has developed expertise in manufacturing, airframe structures, gas turbines, and low observables. He has over 14 patents or patents in application. In 2014, he was Purdue University’s Materials Engineer of the Year, where his team won the Silver Medal in the U.S. Air Force AM Olympics. In 2017, he was invited to join the Additive Manufacturing Technical Community as an SME Advisor based on his active industry contributions, reputation, and personal commitment to expand the use of additive manufacturing. In 2022, he was named vice-chair of SME’s AM Technical Leadership Committee. In 2025, he was recognized by SME’s AM Technical Community as the 2025 AM Industry Achievement Award Winner.

John E. Barnes

FOUNDER & CEO

Chris has worked in advanced manufacturing process development and machine design for more than 15 years. During this time, he has led or managed projects in high precision machining, powder handling, and nearly all aspects of additive manufacturing (AM). Chris started his career at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, focusing on maturing AM from a prototyping tool to a production-capable technology. This early work created a foundational understanding of the challenges to overcome before the transformative promises of AM could be achieved. Chris' work in the Offshore Oil and Gas field provided valuable experience in safety-critical machine design and greater insight into AM challenges to help achieve widespread adoption. At Arconic, Chris had the opportunity to further progress the maturation of AM to a single qualified production process, but not before gaining hands-on experience in AM machine operation, powder handling, and process simulation.

Over the years, Chris has had the opportunity to experience the AM industry as a designer, machine operator, and customer. This experience provides a uniquely valuable perspective to his current role at MPW, where we believe we can address some of the final roadblocks to AM adoption: material cost, selection, and quality.

Chris Aldridge

CO-FOUNDER & CTO