Cody Somers, lead technician at Kennametal, Inc., is the 2026 R&D 100 Technician of the Year. Having worked at the industrial technology and manufacturing company Kennametal since 2015, Somers has more than a decade of hands-on experience with tungsten carbide manufacturing processes.
At Kennametal, Somers serves as a lead operator for multiple industrial-scale additive-manufacturing systems. He supports at least three binder jet printers and three high-temperature furnaces and works across the full production sequence, from build preparation through curing, depowdering and sintering. He has also supported the development of KAF82, a cemented carbide material. Somers also helped move new additive materials and processes from development into practical use.
His broader technical experience includes ball milling, pressing, sintering, extrusion, injection molding, binder jet additive manufacturing and quality control.
Cody Somers
His equipment troubleshooting helped reduce downtime by approximately 40%. A former manager in Kennametal’s Additive Manufacturing R&D Lab notes that Somers introduced approaches that reduced sintering cycle time by 30% and cut printing time in half while improving part quality and consistency. Somers’s résumé also attributes a 50% reduction in labor cost to process-improvement work.
Somers entered the additive-manufacturing group with carbide-processing and sintering experience but no prior additive-manufacturing background, according to a supporting letter from his former manager. The letter explains how Somers became the team’s resident expert in additive manufacturing of tungsten carbide and helped develop materials used to produce components that could not be made with traditional methods. Another supporting letter from a Kennametal colleague details how Somers’s knowledge of printer operation and troubleshooting led the printer manufacturer to contact him directly for technical input on complex equipment problems.
Somers studied criminal justice and machining at Westmoreland County Community College. His résumé lists training in machining, AutoCAD, tool design, CNC operation, maintenance, and inspection and quality control, as well as recognition on the college’s President’s and Dean’s lists.
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.