Industry
How companies are integrating additive manufacturing into production, supply chains, and consumer products at scale.
The Productivity Leap Behind Multi-Laser Metal Printing
Splitting a powder bed across multiple lasers is cutting metal 3D printing's production costs by 60 to 70 percent and, in one demonstrated case, multiplying deposition rate sixfold - but only when the downstream process scales with it.
The Reshoring Argument That Outlasted the Tariffs
In February 2026 the Supreme Court erased the legal basis for most of the tariffs additive manufacturing had been selling as a reshoring tailwind. The industry's business case barely flinched, and that gap says more about what actually drives AM adoption than the tariffs themselves ever did.
What It Takes to Get a 3D-Printed House Permitted
A 3D-printed concrete wall can go up in a fraction of the labor hours a framing crew needs, yet most of these houses still get approved one jurisdiction at a time instead of under a standard building code. The bottleneck has moved from the printer to the paperwork, and a recent cost study shows the economics have moved with it.
The Math Behind Digital Spare Parts
Additive manufacturing lets a company store a spare part as a CAD file instead of a warehoused object, printing it only when a machine breaks down. The economics only favor that trade for a specific slice of a parts catalog, and a recent cost study puts a number on exactly how narrow that slice is.
Why STL Still Won't Die
3D printing has had a better file format than STL for over a decade. Almost everything downloaded online still arrives in the older one, and the reason has little to do with engineering.
The Economics of Recycling a Printed Part
Additive manufacturing built its sustainability pitch on how little material it wastes while printing. What happens to a part once it's done being useful is a separate question, and the recycling infrastructure built for mono-material waste mostly can't answer it yet.
The Open-Source Backbone Behind Every Desktop 3D Printer
Most desktop 3D printers run on firmware nobody at the company wrote, and that borrowed code is a big reason hobbyist machines caught up to industrial ones so quickly.
The Paper Trail Behind a Certified Printed Part
A single certified aerospace or medical part now needs an unbroken data trail back to its powder lot, machine parameters, and build monitoring records. Here's what that digital thread costs to build, and why it's becoming the real product.
Who Carries the Liability for a Defective Printed Part?
Traditional product liability assumes one manufacturer holds the duty of care, but a 3D-printed part can pass through five separate hands before it's installed, and insurers are still figuring out who to bill.
Does 3D Printing Actually Save Energy?
A decade of life cycle studies has moved the sustainability case for additive manufacturing from a hopeful assumption to a set of specific, sometimes uncomfortable numbers.
The Trade-Off Behind Printing Metal at Scale
Wire arc additive manufacturing trades a laser spot for a welding arc, buying deposition rates powder bed fusion cannot match at the cost of resolution, rising residual stress, and a grain structure that keeps drifting as the build gets taller.
The Standards That Made AM Trustworthy
Additive manufacturing has spent the last several years quietly assembling a real standards infrastructure, from shared vocabulary through process control to a new digital thread for tracking every part it makes.
Where Printing Beats Traditional Tooling
The choice between 3D printing and conventional manufacturing methods like injection molding or machining comes down to a specific volume threshold, and recent cost modeling shows exactly where that threshold sits and why it keeps shifting.
Why AM Parts Still Struggle to Qualify
Additive manufacturing's biggest bottleneck isn't the printer anymore - it's proving statistically that a part will behave the same way twice, and the standards bodies are still catching up to how that should be done.
The Recycled Filament Ceiling
Thermomechanical degradation limits how many times thermoplastic feedstock can be reprocessed for 3D printing, constraining how circular polymer additive manufacturing can actually become.