Futureq PT. 2 – AM World: The Birth of On-Demand Manufacturing

By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor

1. NOTE: Due to the President’s anticipated speech on the 2020 election last night, I chose to complete the next installment of the Futureq series this week rather than last week. I chose to do this in case the speech did not produce a smoking gun proving the 2020 election was fraudulent, as was credibly rumored to be the case.

Had I chosen to complete a Deep Dive on a world event, and the speech had delivered a smoking gun, I’d find myself working on the report on the President’s speech today and a report that might be outdated by next week. So, I chose to complete this Futureq installment in case there was a real smoking gun (there wasn’t).

If I was working on that report today, my Futureq installment would be just as relevant next week as it is today. Next week, barring breaking news, expect an analysis of the action leading up to the President’s speech, the content of the speech, and the fallout afterwards.

“For the first time in architectural history, we’re approaching the resolution and complexity of the natural world by creating new technologies that will ultimately enable us to design a beam as if it were a branch or an HVAC and waste removal system as if it were a photosynthetic GI tract engineered to convert carbon into biofuel.” – Neri Oxman

“A system which integrates additive manufacturing at scale allows products to be produced in smaller quantities more often and much closer to where the product will be utilized. And there’s a direct correlation to demand as opposed to estimation.” – Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the second installment of our Futureq Series, where we report on the leading-edge technologies transforming our world today and the world to come. This will culminate in a special publication on December 18, 2026. This will be our 2026 Futureq Report.

In the first installment, we analyzed AI. What will follow are installments on Robotics and Energy. In the final 2026 Futureq report, we will synthesize the technologies, and integrate them with another still emerging technology, quantum computing.

We will predict where we might be going in the near future. We will include an example using our model city that we also use in our Hope Exit series and Exiting Goshen, Primopolis.

In this second installment we will be analyzing 3D Printing.

It goes by different names. It will sometimes be referred to as 3D Printing, sometimes additive manufacturing, and sometimes just as AM.

Its marriage with AI has accelerated its development, with the future promising even greater developments. Unlike its partner, AI, 3D Printing is a technology that favors small scale over the large scale. Its promise is the creation of a world in which localities primarily manufacture their own products, from cars to screws.

The large-scale leviathans of the world, the nation-states, have finally recognized the power of AM. Their militaries are being transformed by it, while their investment in the technology is transforming additive manufacturing.

Next to AI, I believe this technology will have the most transformative impact on human habits of being since the printing press. AI might dwarf them both.

1. THE BIG SHIFT

The Additive Manufacturing, or 3D printing, Market has made radical shifts that began in 2025. In the last 6 months, those shifts have dramatically accelerated. 2025 began with 3D printing mostly occupying prototyping and niche objet d’art markets. In July 2026, Additive Manufacturing (AM) has successfully moved into end-user production markets of increasingly complex products.

The manufacturing ramifications of AM have not fully played out, but the future promises a total saturation of the overall manufacturing market. AM will allow manufacturing to move towards “print-on demand,” which could maximize company profits by minimizing production risk when demand doesn’t meet expectations.

AM will allow manufacturers to broaden their production lines, as product changes can be done with the changing of a file in a software program. AM has only just begun to move into production, but is already becoming a dominant player.

This followed a long period of solid, steady developmental growth. AI is the fastest developing technology impacting our world. AM is potentially nearly as transformative to human living as AI will be, and it’s about to accelerate its development growth even more.

I have been following the developments of 3D printing since 2003. Growth was steady but slow those first few years. It has been picking up year after year until it recently accelerated. This has happened in part through AI’s integration both as a designer of printers and manager of them, especially at the micro-factory level.

What many people, including me, have long wanted to see is printers capable of producing end-user products more efficiently and cheaply than what is fast becoming legacy manufacturing technology. This is exactly where we have finally arrived.

1. AI INTEGRATION

Growth in 3D Printing, now mostly referred to as AM, has been accelerated primarily by one new element, the rise of more competent AI tools. A bellwether of AI’s integration with AM is the development of a new printable additive for NASA called GRCop-42. This enables the printing of liquid rocket engine combustion devices.

The use of AI accelerated the development of a new additive material in a fraction of the time it had taken before. This reduces years of development down to a few months in time.

This is just one of many growing examples of AI’s integration with AM development. From software to materials to the machines themselves, AI is accelerating technological development exponentially.

Sine the rise of AI, 3D printing has developed more in the last two years than it had in the last 10 years combined. Perhaps we could go further back than that.

In addition to AI’s acceleration of technological development, it is also enabling significantly more efficient management of microfactories overall. Microfactories are a rising player in manufacturing, and I suspect they will be the dominant form of manufacturing in short order. Even where massive productions exist, they will be divided by microfactories.

The “factory workers” of tomorrow (and already today) are the managers of AI and the support they need to do their managing. Some of that support is already understood, and some we have yet to discover that we need.

1. FROM PROTOTYPING TO MANUFACTURING

One of the main drivers of AM development has been Defense, especially in the U.S. and China. The problems defense is solving are becoming the standards of civil AM development.

What militaries want are AM microfactories that can use indigenous materials to quickly print whatever the operation needs from the moment it hits the ground going forward. The explosion of new additives has expanded potential raw material sources for manufacturing, making the indigenous resources more likely to be useful for AM production.

In a short period of time, the diversity of materials that can withstand the greatest extreme conditions and daily wear and tear has exploded AND become a lot cheaper. Right now, AM is becoming a dominant player in Aerospace, Healthcare, Defense, and Automotive industries. We are getting closer and closer to my dream of being able to order your customized AM car for less than half what you’d pay for a mid-range, mid-size vehicle conventionally manufactured.

Imagine ordering a modernized 57’ Chevy, but for less than half the price you’d pay for that same mid-range, mid-size vehicle conventionally manufactured. One-offs will mostly cost the same to print as any standard pattern would.

The price might get cheaper if you trade in your old car, to be recycled and printed as a new car.

Just around the horizon is multi-material printing, and soon, printing of complex parts, including electric, with one printer using multiple additives.

Right now, the explosion in AM is mostly at the industrial level of manufacturing, but consumer product manufacturing is beginning to expand. I expect by the end of 2027 that market will be dominated by AM as well. Its entry is strongest in the one-off footwear market (or bespoke), architectural lighting, titanium consumer accessories, and custom orthotics markets.

As mentioned earlier, the further development of microfactories has led to the explosion of their use. Their flexibility in setting up, tearing down, and changing production, makes them ideal for on-site use production that militaries need.

What’s coming next could be microfactories for businesses. We have already seen the development of print-on-demand bookstores, where the customer’s book is printed while they wait. Imagine having your product(s) printed for you onsite by the store.

1. BELLWETHER INNOVATIONS

Here are some key areas where AM is making the most advances, but it is not a comprehensive list. These are, however, the areas where AM is having the most felt impact.

1. MATERIAL INNOVATIONS – Not only is material innovation expanding the potential uses of AM, along with its potential range of useable resources, it is also improving speed and accessibility, meaning parts are more refined (or smoother) and more durable.

Cold Metal Fusion and Multi-Material Metal 3D Printing may be considered the practical cutting edge of AM today. Composites are also coming to the fore, from carbon fiber-reinforced composites to glass-filled and mineral-filled composites.

Thanks to the development of carbon and Kevlar fff feedstocks, desktop printers have the capacity to print with “aerospace-grade stiffness.”

While material development has exploded, it is now the main limitation on AM development, for faster printers are easier to develop than the alloys needed to expand AM’s impact on manufacturing as a whole.

2. PRINTING INNOVATIONS – Printers have become faster, more efficient, and more precise. While not yet in use, researchers have demonstrated the ability to create hybrid printer systems that can both do high-speed volumetric printing and ultra-high-resolution two-photon polymerization.

One system prints the large part of the project while the other system prints the detailed parts of the project. This is called multi-scale printing. It will enable the printing of bioscaffolds, advanced optics, and microfluidic devices.

The lower cost of metal printing has suddenly made AM viable in the metal manufacturing market. Advanced metal powder-bed systems have both lowered the cost and created more variability of use. Portable metal industrial printers are sometimes as low as $20,000. These are ideal for small manufacturers, universities, and research laboratories.

Soon, the cost of starting your own industrial factory will be within your reach.

3. COST-CUTTING INNOVATIONS – More efficient tool changers and multi-nozzle systems that reduce waste are lowering the cost of AM significantly.
4. MEDICAL – Printed medicines on demand are developing, but the real explosion in AM’s entry into the medical industry comes from bioprinting and custom medical device printing. In organ printing, AM is not printing whole organs, but organ printing has now moved to the clinical stage.
5. HOME BUILDING – The days of printing houses using Portland Cement are over, as home printing is developing geopolymers, alkali-activated binders, and recycled aggregates. The recycled aggregates offer the greatest sustainably flourishing option.

Traditional home design is also being abandoned as designers look to maximize the advantage of precise printers capable of using multiple materials. Maximizing efficient structures with minimal material to reduce cost while preserving integrity seems to be where AM might excel.

AM’s impact on home building is minimal, at present, and foreseeably will be for the near future, at least. But within 10-15 years, maybe sooner, AM will most likely become the main method of building construction.

1. MILITARY INTEGRATION

As I stated earlier, defense has been the primary driver of AI’s rapid development. It is private industry developing the new technologies, but defense is footing the research bill. The amount of money spent on developing defensive AM technology is expected to hit $3.3 billion this year, an 83% increase over last year. Similar increases are expected in coming years.

Manufacturers are now delivering to militaries robotic 3D printing construction systems capable of producing military facilities at 40% less than the previous cost. This same system can be used to create a local construction business for an ambitious entrepreneur.

What militaries wanted they are beginning to get, printed parts at or near the point of need. A good General may need to know as much about 3D printing as he does about artillery.

After the U.S. government banned the Department of Defense from using any foreign 3D printer, American print manufacturers exploded.

1. DRONES – Ukraine has become the bellwether of drone warfare, including onsite drone production. Drones are becoming increasingly designed with additive printing in mind. What’s just about here are containerized drone-production cells. These cells will just need additive added for them to produce multiple drones in one printing. These microfactories are the size of a shipping container.
2. COMPONENTS – Perhaps the biggest impact felt right now is in component printing. 3D printers are exponentially reducing the logistics demand of onsite repair. There are no warehouses filled with parts because they are printed onsite as needed. The use of components printing has only begun, but it promises to take over in short order.
3. AEROSPACE – With the advancement of materials. AM is becoming a dominant force in Aerospace parts manufacturing, with no better proof of concept for AM than printing parts for jets, helicopters, etc. Precise printing is also being used in hypersonics development.
4. BEYOND THE PRINTER

As you can imagine, desktop 3D printers are now capable of printing gun parts that can be reliably used in action. This effectively means the government must control either the 3D printer or the material needed for gun parts printing, or both. They must do this to prevent Americans from doing what is their constitutional right, make their own guns.

New York is trying to get ahead of this “threat” to state control by introducing verification and feasibility frameworks for desktop manufacturing to assure they can’t make gun parts. This means nerfing your 3D printer in ways that won’t just prevent you from printing gun parts, they’ll prevent you from printing reliable parts.

In Home construction, regulations are slowing down development, especially because of the expected update to international building codes.

I anticipate a rise in AM regulation, especially in progressive states. I believe 3D printing is the next frontier of 2^nd Amendment rights.

There are two motivations for government regulation, preventing gun manufacturing and preventing low-cost entry for competing local manufacturers. The future of manufacturing could see the end of Amazon and Walmart, and neither would go down without a fight.

Keeping local microfactories expensive through licensing is a likely outcome.

1. ASSESSMENT

The sudden acceleration of AM thanks mostly because of AI and its military usefulness presents yet another emerging technology set to fundamentally alter the way we do things in some ways we can foresee and in other ways we cannot.

AM is a decidedly small-scall-favoring technology that can be converted into large-scale favoring through government regulations that nerf printing machines for civilians, as well as the liberal application of Intellectual Property laws to assure the cost of printing remains high enough to prevent too much manufacturing competition from forming.

As for controlling the printing of guns, this will only be effective on “law abiding citizens,” not criminals, who will be able to build their own un-nerfed machines.

Gun printing, weapons printing in general (especially drones), isn’t the only threat to the advantaged powers of the land. Soon, it will be within the realm of possibility for small local businesses to print most of their inhouse-designed products onsite, on demand.

This is more threatening to advantaged power than weapons printing is.

The need for militaries to continue to expand their AM use acts as a deterrent on the state to artificially slow down the development of this technology until the favored corporations have created a nerfed, IP-protected firewall between the non-corporate user and themselves.

The potential for contained micro-economies freed from the consequence of the macro-economies around them is very real and very much the greater existential threat to large-scale centralized power than weapons printing will be.

The balance between letting AM develop to advantage your military and slowing it down to let your favored corporations stay ahead of the decentralizing threat will be difficult to sustain, especially where ideological capture limits simple truth telling.

PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS

I’d expect to see states mostly going too far one way or another in their approaches that cannot fairly see true reality due to ideological capture. They will mostly lean too far on protecting decentralizing threats, though some states will find short-term opportunity in allowing more unregulated development.

In America, progressive states will move more aggressively against decentralized threats than conservative states will. This will also break down to county and local governance as well. Generally, Democrat-controlled lands will move more aggressively to limit 3D printing across the board for citizens, while Republican-controlled lands will move more aggressively against microfactory power than it will weapons printing power.

The continued development of AM will disrupt the nature of manufacturing at some scale, moving it further away from guessing demand and more towards being able to print on demand. It is not in the state’s best interests for warehouses to disappear, be it Republican or Democrat led. Yet warehouses will start to disappear, though not entirely, for regulations will prevent that from completely happening.

The nature of war will change. The reduction in logistic complexity alone will allow all militaries to become far more flexible than they are today. The cost of allowing beachheads has just exponentially increased, as beachheads can soon become self-sustaining war-making institutions, using the invaded land’s own resources to continue to print weapons that will be used against them.

The return of fortifications is here, and AM will expand the innovate possibilities of fortifications in the 21^st Century.

The ability of AM to create unique shapes and designs never possible before, coupled with AI as a design partner, means war will most likely look completely different within 10 years than it does today. The battlefield of tomorrow will become wave upon wave of non-human warfare designed to crack through to kill the humans behind the machines.

Human casualties will be in homes more than battlefields.

War will become like American football. The goal is to get past the defenders, the machines, to get to the endzone, the human killing fields.

The good news, from a sustainably flourishing perspective, is the cost to take and hold land continues to go up and will only increase with the rise of AM/AI warfare.

While AI favors large-scale production, AI tools that specialize and serve small user bases can be created and sustained at the small-scale level, matching their large-scale counterparts blow for blow in managing their AM/AI warfare strategies. They can be just as smart as the large-scale machines; they just can’t match the size of the user base.

Despite their best efforts, there will be a rise of small-scale manufacturers, as well as a rise in print-on-demand local stores, but their cost to entry, while initially low, will increase almost every year as the powers that be design new legislative and regulatory bottlenecks on the use of 3D printing by the non-corporate and non-state agent.

Overall, there is great opportunity for those building Hope Estates, like us, to incorporate the new innovations in additive manufacturing to our own plan to “Escape Goshen.”

FURTHER RESOURCES:

10 Best 3D Printers 2026 – Bestchoice.guide

Best 3D Printer for Beginners: Our Top Starter Picks in 2026 – Pcguide

The Best DIY 3D Printer Kits – 3Dnatives