The Air Force Poured Another $9M Into 3D Systems' Metal 3D Printing Program

Another Extension, More Money

The US Air Force has awarded 3D Systems an additional $9 million to keep developing its large-format metal 3D printing platform. This is the third tranche of funding for the program, pushing total investment to $27.4 million. The work is now scheduled to wrap up in September 2027.

The program, called GEN-II DMP-1000, is being run out of 3D Systems facilities in Rock Hill, South Carolina and San Diego, California. The stated goal is to build a metal 3D printer capable of producing flight-ready parts at scale. The Air Force is particularly interested in applications tied to hypersonic systems, where complex geometries and fast iteration make additive manufacturing genuinely useful.

Why the Air Force Keeps Coming Back

The original contract, signed back in 2023, was worth roughly $10.76 million. The Air Force extended it twice before this latest award. Each extension has marked a new development phase, and each phase has delivered something worth funding again.

Dr. Michael Shepard, Vice President of Aerospace and Defense at 3D Systems, said the award reflects continued confidence in the technology and the team. That is a fair claim: the Air Force does not hand out $9 million increments casually, and this is now a five-year relationship.

The broader context is worth noting. The Air Force has been one of the most active military adopters of additive manufacturing across every relevant domain. It has used 3D printing to fix C-17 transport aircraft with parts no vendor would touch. It is fitting 3D-printed microvanes across the entire C-17 fleet to cut drag. It has an active agreement with CoAspire to produce cruise missile fuselages via 3D printing. It is even experimenting with 3D-printed concrete infrastructure at forward operating locations.

Metal AM for flight hardware sits at the center of all that activity. Hypersonic vehicles in particular need components with internal cooling channels and optimized geometries that traditional manufacturing cannot deliver economically.

What the GEN-II DMP-1000 Might Actually Be

3D Systems has not released detailed specifications for the GEN-II DMP-1000. The naming convention offers a clue: the company's current production large-format metal printer is the DMP Factory 500, which has a 500 millimeter cubic build volume and three 500W fiber lasers. A DMP-1000 designation suggests a build envelope in the one-meter range, at least in one dimension. That would be a meaningful jump in scale and would explain why the Air Force is interested.

Until the program concludes and more details emerge, the exact capabilities remain speculative. What is not speculative is the money: $27.4 million in total government investment is serious backing for any additive manufacturing project, and it signals that the Air Force sees large-format metal printing as a capability worth scaling.