Introducing “The 10 Most Innovative 3D Printing Companies of 2023” article! Discover the trailblazing companies pushing the boundaries of additive manufacturing with groundbreaking technologies and cutting-edge applications. From revolutionizing healthcare to transforming manufacturing, this article highlights the frontrunners shaping the future of 3D printing.
The 10 Most Innovative 3D Printing Companies of 2023
by Carolyn Schwaar
Published Jun 14, 2023
Advancements in additive manufacturing take all forms, but these 10 innovators are pushing the industry forward unlike any others.
Innovation is par for the course in additive manufacturing, which makes selecting the most innovative companies a challenge. Not only is this industry one of the fastest-growing and start-up filled among manufacturing technology sectors, but its reach is broad, spanning every market from aerospace and healthcare to construction and consumer products.
The companies we feature below have developed ground-breaking approaches to making things. They’re disrupting traditional manufacturing markets to help other companies around the world innovate faster, build better, and produce more. They’re taking the lead in bioengineering, material science, and electrification. These businesses are knitting new, closer relationships between visionary design and manufactured reality, whether that’s electric vehicles or organ transplants.
These companies are brimming with insights into how additive manufacturing can make a meaningful impact on your company, your industry, and society at large.
VulcanForms
VulcanForms industrial-scale additive manufacturing facility with its proprietary LPBF 3D printers (Source: VulcanForms)
The Innovation: VulcanForms is an additive manufacturing foundry that uses proprietary metal laser powder bed fusion machines, which it does not sell, along with unique workflow software to help companies employ production additive manufacturing. The facility provides end-to-end digital manufacturing solutions to deliver engineered components and assemblies to customers in the medical, aerospace, defense, and semiconductor industries, among others.
VulcanForms uses its expertise in 3D printing, software, materials, automation, and operations to offer production additive manufacturing as a service. The company’s offerings include part assessment to determine suitability for 3D printing, optimizing the design, employing advanced modeling and simulation to reduce iterations, qualifying the resulting parts, and initiating serial production and post-processing.
The Company: Founded in 2015 by MIT professor John Hart and then-graduate student Martin C. Feldmann, VulcanForms began building its first production factory, the VulcanOne, in Devens, Mass, which opened for production in 2022. This facility is powered by a fleet of proprietary 100-kilowatt laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing systems, totaling more than 2 megawatts of laser capacity. The company’s other facilities focus on automated precision machining, assembly operations, and other process parts of the digital manufacturing workflow.
Cerhum
Belgium biotech company Cerhum developed the materials, design, and 3D printing process for bioreabsorable, patient-specific bone grafts (Source: Cerhum)
The Innovation: Cerhum earned a new European Medical Device regulatory approval in 2022 for its product MyBone, which are patient-specific 3D printed bone grafts made of a biocompatible bioceramic. The combination of a fully biocompatible bioceramic with a patient-specific shape enhanced by controlled porosity makes MyBone a promising solution for a wide range of bone repair applications. The company is starting with repairs for facial deformations and soon for the dental and oncological market. In Nov. 2022, Cerhum worked with medical teams in France to complete the first transplant of a 3D printed nose.
Approval of safe and effective synthetic bone grafts manufactured to meet patients’ unique needs is a turning point for medical care.
The Company: Cerhum, a medical device company in Liège, Belgium, was founded in 2015 with a mission to “print bone grafts to heal patients in order to make their lives better.” It introduced MyBone to the European market in 2020. The company’s innovative approach required developing the materials, the complex designs, and the manufacturing process to deliver high-precision biocompatible and patient-specific bone grafts.
Steakholder Foods
Steakholder Foods developed its own material and processes for cultured meat (Source: Steakholder Foods)
The Innovation: 3D printed cultivated meat company Steakholder Foods (formerly MeaTech 3D), which developed it own printing technology and materials, launched a 3D printed 100% cultured beef cut in 2022 that has the same nutritional value as traditional beef. The company launched a 3D printed fish fillet in 2023.
The rapid advancement of the cultured meat market for beef, chicken, pork, and seafood can lead to lowering greenhouse gases and deforestation caused by cattle as well as reduce the depletion of ocean biodiversity.
The Company: Israel-based Steakholder Foods, was founded in 2019 and operates facilities in Antwerp, Belgium, and California. The company is a member of the UN Global Compact, committing to support to strengthening food security, decreasing carbon footprint, and conserving water and land resources. The company is developing a variety of slaughter-free beef, chicken, pork, and, recently, seafood products.
Sakuú
Sakuú 3D prints recyclable lithium metal batteries is custom shapes (Source: Sakuú)
The Innovation: Sakuú produces recyclable lithium metal batteries through a mass-scale additive manufacturing technology it invented that enables custom shapes, sizes, and compositions. This California start-up opened its pilot line in 2022 to bring the sustainable production of its Swift Print battery cells to market. The cells enable designers and manufacturers to fit batteries around their innovations rather than design them to accommodate standard battery shapes. Proprietary cell technologies can provide superior energy densities for broad industrial applications.
With speed, flexibility, and sustainability in mind, Sakuú aims to accelerate electrification for mobility and other markets.
The Company: Founded in 2016, Sakuú developed the Kavian platform solution for the commercial-scale production of batteries and other cell chemistry for manufacturing. The company says its efforts focus on 3D printing a range of next-generation batteries — from lithium metal to all-solid-state — that can help reduce society’s reliance on fossil fuels.
UpNano / Fertilis
The UpFlow material from UpNano enabled this groundbreaking IVF microfluidic device (Source: UpNano)
The Innovation: A novel material called UpFlow that UpNano developed for micro 3D printing microfluidic devices on its NanoOne printer enabled medtech startup Fertilis to develop a cell-culture device for the in vitro fertilization (IVF) market that enables a 30% – 40% reduction of implantation cycles. This first-of-its-kind 3D printed micro-device incorporates 0.05 mm features and eliminates the need for IVF practitioners to move cells between Petri dishes. For UpNano, the development of UpFlow demonstrates the enormous potential of 2PP 3D printing for cell and medical research.
The Company: Founded in 2018, UpNano is a Vienna-based high-tech company focused on the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of high-resolution 3D-printer based on 2-photon-polymerization, a type of micro-3D printing for resolution below 0.2 microns. UpNano provides an ecosystem of hardware, software, and optimized printing materials for the fabrication of polymeric microparts, as well as bioprinting in a native cell environment.
United Therapeutics & 3D Systems
Human vasculature model created using Print to Perfusion process (Source: United Therapeutics)
The Innovation: United Therapeutics partnered with 3D Systems to 3D print lung scaffolds, which successfully demonstrated gas exchange in animal models in 2022 and became the first step toward the company’s goal to create an unlimited supply of transplantable 3D printed lungs in the future. Scientists at United Therapeutics plan to cellularize these 3D printed scaffolds with a patient’s own stem cells to create tolerable, transplantable human lungs that should not require immunosuppression to prevent rejection. 3D Systmes’ Print to Perfusion process enables the 3D printing of high-resolution scaffolds, which can be perfused with living cells to create tissues.
3D Systems and United Therapeutics have two additional organs under development — kidneys and livers — furthering their plan to revolutionize organ bioengineering.
The Companies: United Therapeutics is an American biotechnology company that develops novel, life-extending technologies for patients in the areas of lung disease and organ development. The collaboration with Rock Hill, S.C., based-3D Systems began in 2017 as a joint multi-year research project to combine the 3D printing and precision healthcare expertise of 3D Systems with the regenerative medicine and organ manufacturing capabilities of United Therapeutics.
Phase3D
Niall O’Dowd, founder and CEO of Phase3D, the metal 3D printing live monitoring system (Source: Phase3D)
The Innovation: Phase3D’s Project Fringe uses structured light and machine vision to detect anomalies in metal laser powder bed fusion 3D printing in real time. The system instantly detects several major part-compromising defects and offers comparative measurements to the original CAD file. The patent pending optical monitoring system provides data fast enough to allow for current-layer alteration and decision-making. Fringe became available in 2023 as an early adopter retrofit kit for a wide range of laser powder bed fusion 3D printers, with more on the way.
Live part quality data for metal additive manufacturers has the potential to dramatically decrease the cost per part of metal 3D printing, lessen production delays, and lower energy and material waste.
The Company: Chicago-based Phase3D was founded in 2021 by Niall O’Dowd. The company has earned numerous military and government contracts to further develop its technology.
Axtra3D
Axtra3D’s Lumina X1 3D printer combines SLA and DLP technologies (Source: Axtra3D)
The Innovation: Axtra3D’s Lumina X1 3D printer features what the company calls Hybrid PhotoSynthesis (HPS) technology. This patented method of resin 3D printing combines SLA (laser) and DLP technologies in one platform to take advantage of the strengths (resolution and speed) of both. The laser is used for surfaces with a 45-micron resolution, while the DLP technology is used for the mass of the part enabling large resin prints faster than traditional SLA. The Lumina technology debuted in 2021, but the company started taking orders in Nov. 2022.
Hybrid PhotoSynthesis (HPS) has the potential to employ established technologies in a novel way to achieve better results in resin 3D printing.
The Company: Axtra3D, headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., was founded in 2021 around its portfolio of 12 patents (pending and approved) for printer technologies, materials, and process innovations. The company also launched a DLP resin 3D printer, Revox X1, without HPS.
Xolo
The Xube 3D printer from Xolo uses a proprietary volumetric resin 3D printing technology for support-free 3D printing with high-viscosity resins (Source: Xolo)
The Innovation: The Xube 3D printer from Xolo uses a proprietary technology for support-free precision 3D printing with high-viscosity resins. Rather than solidifying resin layer by layer, the Xube projects the entire 3D object into the vat of resin at once, creating an object in minutes. In R&D since 2020, the company spent 2022 uncovering applications for the technology, which range from lenses to medical devices.
The Company: Xolo is a Berlin-based technology company founded in 2019 to develop additive manufacturing technologies that move the industry beyond the speed and resolution hurdles plaguing all other resin 3D printers. The company is combining its expertise in photopolymer chemistry, lasers, and lens projection to move volumetric 3D printing from scientific concept to practical application.
Bambu Lab
The Bambu Lab X1 Carbon, with AMS unit (Source: All3DP)
The Innovation: The Bambu Lab X1 Carbon FDM 3D printer, launched in 2022, packs quality and technology into an under-$2,000 package that bridges the gap between consumer and professional machines. It introduces a new audience to the capabilities possible with a 300 °C hot end, multi-material and multi-color capabilities, fast speeds, LiDAR-guided bed leveling, first layer inspection, active vibration compensation, and error identification.
In raising the bar for the features and performance of a sub-$2,000 3D printer, Bambu Lab succeeds in broadening the accessibility of 3D printing to a wide range of businesses and pushing technology forward in pursuit of innovation. In late 2022, the company launched the P1P, which shares many of the X1’s features, but at an even lower price tag ($700).
The Company: Established in 2020 by a team of “3D printing fans”, as the company says, Bambu Lab’s founders are engineers in robotics, artificial intelligence, and materials science. Its first desktop FDM launched on Kickstarter received more than $7 million in pledges making it one of the most successful hardware projects ever on the crowd-funding platform.
2023 SELECTION METHOD
Selecting 10 stand-out innovations in the past 12 months was no easy task. All3DP editors researched and presented a pool of innovative companies to our selection committee (below), who brought their own nominations to the table. The selection committee, made up of the 13 members of the 2023 All3DP Editorial Advisory Board, ranked each nomination via an anonymous ballot. The companies with the highest ranking on our innovation scale are presented here. Nominations can not be sponsored and are completely independent of outside influence. Committee members were precluded from nominating their own companies.
Selection Committee: 10 Most Innovative 3D Printing Companies of 2023
Brian Alexander, Global AM Product and Business Development Manager, Solvay Specialty Polymers
Amy Alexander, Anatomic Modeling Lab Unit Head, Mayo Clinic
Jos Burger, Member of the Supervisory Board, Former CEO, Ultimaker / 3YourMind
John Barnes, Managing Director / CEO, The Barnes Global Advisors / Metal Powder Works
Johan-Till Broer, Vice President of Product, UltiMaker
Carl Diver, Director, PrintCity
Richard Grylls, Chief Engineer of Additive Technology, Beehive Industries
Douglas Krone, CEO, Dynamism
Sylvia Monsheimer, Head of Market Segment, High Performance Polymers, Evonik Operations
Kristin Mulherin, Founder & President AM-Cubed / President of Women in 3D Printing
Sonja Rasch, Sales Director, Account Manager Additive Manufacturing (D/CH), Materialise
Matthias Schmidt-Lehr, Managing Partner, Ampower
Tuan TranPham, former CRO Azul 3D
Editors, All3DP