This 3D Printer Is 15 Times Faster,
and the Army Is Already Buying It
If 3D
printing is going to hit speed that manufacturing requires, the improvement
will need to be exponential.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD
TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH
INVESTORS @TULLMAN
Sep 29,
2026
I think we’ve all
concluded that the bloom is somewhat off the rose in terms of 3D printing. Like
so many extraordinary advances in science and technology that appear akin to
magic for a while, watching a machine that looked vaguely like your microwave turn
spools of plastic into physical representations of everyday objects you’d just
drawn on your computer was a pretty amazing experience. You could print
precision parts, you could print pizzas, and eventually you could print entire
buildings. And while Yoda from Star Wars was for
years the most frequently printed object, there were plenty of serious and
important applications in pharmaceuticals, construction and surgery, to name a
few.
There was, however, an
unspoken issue that too many of the earliest enthusiasts overlooked, whether
intentionally or inadvertently—or because so much of the formative
experimentation and developmental work took place in academic environments
where time and money were secondary concerns. In any event, for whatever
reason, 3D printing hit a fairly substantial barrier in the area of
manufacturing, where you might have expected that it would absolutely and
rapidly thrive.
The problem was that it
just took too darn long to get the job done. Or, as the comedian Stephen Wright
used to say: everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. In the
hurry-up world that we live in today, where nobody wants to wait for anything,
this was a serious impediment and somewhat comparable to one of the biggest
obstacles that we’re seeing with the adoption of EVs. While it may only take an
hour using a high-speed hook-up to charge your Tesla, you’re still going to waste several
hours if you have to wait in line behind a few other people waiting to do the
same thing. If it takes 20 minutes to fabricate a single part that a machine
could stamp out hundreds of in the same period of time, you’re never going to
win the race to replace the old fabrication methods.
Manufacturing assembly
lines work on the weakest link theory: that the slowest action or process in
the production chain is what dictates the speed of the entire operation. If 3D
printing is ever going to graduate to the level of speed that volume manufacturing
requires, the improvement in the amount of time required to produce a single
part will need to be exponential, not incremental. The span is similar to the
best runner in the world, competing in a sprint against an F1 race car. We’re
talking about the difference between a system capable of printing a part every
10 seconds as compared to the current production rate that could be hours per
part.
I may have seen the
future recently at a company called Impossible Objects, which has built next-generation
printing systems for manufacturers that it says operate 15 times faster than
the current competition and turn out parts that are stronger, lighter, and more
precisely honed. Their current machines (backed by dozens of issued patents)
already set the bar extraordinarily high, but they expect that the next quantum
jump in production speed will be on the order of 65 times. Speaking to the
leaders of this team, you get the distinct impression of two ideas that they
hold near and dear: (1) if you don’t know it’s impossible, it’s easier to do;
and (2) it always seems impossible until it’s done.
Keep in mind that these
are not toys or lightweight demos, these are industrial production-grade
materials as strong as aluminum (on a strength-to-weight basis), which can be
produced at traditional manufacturing-like costs. In addition, because many of the
new products they are producing (specifically for military applications)
require complex geometries, they simply cannot be executed and accomplished
with prior injection molding tech. In order to even imagine these new
solutions, there had to be a heavy dose of dreams and wish casting. But they
got there and have demonstrated something that every good entrepreneur knows:
the only thing that ultimately keeps a dream from being achieved is the fear of
failure.
Whether you believe the
objective warfare observers along with certain of our own independent
government agencies or the latest lies of the drunk running the Pentagon, the
fact is that, for our military to remain effective and competitive, they will
need to take huge steps forward in every aspect of drone warfare and especially
in terms of developing and manufacturing hyper-lightweight disposable devices
designed for one-way munition delivery. The hardest challenge for changemakers
and innovators is always to get the folks in charge to give up the ways that
have worked fairly well for them in the past, but fortunately here, there’s
very little in the past to discard.
The latest Impossible
Objects machine, which the U.S. Army has already purchased, will produce 10,000
drones per month with a near term production target of 120,000 UAV bodies per
year. In addition to the machines themselves, the company supplies its customers
with substantial volumes of proprietary consumables which its machines turn
into these devices. The annual value of the consumables is about five times the
cost of the machines themselves and these materials are not available anywhere
else for a variety of reasons.
At first, dreams seem
impossible; then improbable; and then inevitable.
