NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

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.

SWALLOWING TRUMP'S FILTHY LIES

 

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS HIS LATEST INC. MAGAZINE ARTICLE

 LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

CONGRATS TO JYL BONAGURO ON A GREAT SHOWING IN AN IMPORTANT EXHIBITION AT THE NATIONAL HELLENIC MUSEUM

 

RAPISTS AND GRIFTERS - THIEVES AND TRAITORS

 

A FOOLISH CLOWN

 

When historians look back on Trump’s foreign policy in a century, I bet these are their verdict on his most famous policies:

The support of Russia--the most evil.

The pillaging of Venezuela--the most corrupt.

The decision to go to war with Iran--the most incompetent.

The abandonment of Taiwan--the most geopolitically catastrophic.

The China policy--the most craven.

The destruction of US relations with its allies--the most stupid.

NO CLUE...

 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Xfinity Is Turning WiFi Into Home Security. ADT and Brinks Should Pay Attention

Disruptive innovation and competition can come from anyone and anywhere.

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @TULLMAN

Sep 22, 2026

Every time I pay a bill for my home security service, I find myself wondering exactly what the value is that I’m allegedly receiving. It’s been a few decades and there hasn’t been a single instance of activity—our pets don’t even trigger any alarms. I’m pretty sure we’re among the millions of families who’ve gone for months if not longer without ever even turning the systems on. We do replace the batteries in our smoke alarms on a regular basis, but they don’t really depend on paying Brinks or ADT in order to operate.

If my insurance company didn’t offer me some modest home insurance discount for having the service, I’m pretty sure we would have bagged the whole thing by now. I guess we’d keep the signs and window stickers, as those are probably the major deterrents in the whole deal. I’m sure there are folks who can recite hair-raising and instructive instances of the benefit of these services, but it’s certainly not me. It feels a little like buying flood insurance when you live in the middle of the desert, although with climate change these days, I guess even those folks can’t be sure of what’s coming down the pipe. They can be certain, however, that if they suffer a loss, their gigantic deductible will make sure that they feel some significant portion of the pain.

All of which brings me to a new offer by Xfinity that seems to raise a serious competitive threat to the firms protecting us against home invasions, break-ins and burglaries. It’s called Xfinity Shield, which is described as an “always-on” home protection and security platform. I want to give them immediate props for recognizing that we lazy civilians can’t really be trusted to turn our own systems on and off on a daily basis. Their new basic program is free and relies on your existing WiFi and certain other equipment in order to work. Don’t get me started on how often my WiFi and cable connections go down, but it happens more often than you’d expect.

In any event, while I often talk about the many benefits of riding someone else’s rails, which means to partner or rev share so you can utilize their existing channels and infrastructure in order to avoid the costs of building your own, it’s even smarter and cheaper to double down and add, extend or bolster your existing offerings and infrastructure to create new products and services that you can provide to your existing customer base. But the Shield service is a great example of another important competitive strategy which is moving into adjacent markets where there are substantial opportunities. Frankly, I would guess that the major security firms—even with the advent of Ring doorbells and similar offerings—wouldn’t ever have imagined that entities like Xfinity would move directly into their space.

The WiFi Shield service provides in-house movement alerts and nighttime monitoring without incremental hardware. The claim (which I’m not vouching for) is that enhancements to their WiFi services will detect changes in the radio frequency signals that are being constantly passed between their Gateway head device and WiFi-connected devices in the home and then send a signal to you through their phone app when there are unfamiliar or unexpected changes. As long as you sleep with your phone nearby, I guess this works if the notifications are audible, although the one thing I don’t love about my current system is the absolutely deafening sirens that go off inside and outside the house, which aren’t part of the basic Xfinity deal. Needless to say, for additional fees, there’s a full menu of additional equipment, cameras, services, and upcharges which will let you build a system that more closely resembles the typical home platforms and packages.

The simple morale of this whole story is that disruptive innovation and competition can come from anyone and anywhere including the players we regard as laggards and last generation performers who are stuck in the hardware business while software rules the world. But the Xfinity Shield is a very important example of how new technology and advanced software and signaling can take existing rails and connections and re-energize and update them to support and offer new competitive services at price points (including free) that will give the big guys in security like Brinks and ADT plenty of headaches beyond wondering about Ring and its doorbells.

 

GOLLUM J.