Toyota and Rivian Are Putting Stratasys' New F870 on Their Factory Floors

A Big Industrial 3D Printer Just Landed at Two Major Automotive Plants

Stratasys launched its F870 FDM system in mid-September 2026, and it already has two of the world's largest automakers testing it on real factory-floor work. Toyota Production Engineering in Georgetown, Kentucky, and Rivian Automotive in Plymouth, Michigan, have both started deploying the machine. Their teams are using it to produce tooling, assembly fixtures, inspection gauges, and manufacturing aids that previously required lengthy machining lead times.

The F870 is built specifically for production environments. Its build volume measures 1000 x 610 x 610 mm, which Stratasys says is the largest fully heated-chamber build area in its class. That size matters when you are printing jigs and fixtures that need to hold full-sized automotive components. The heated chamber and industrial-grade materials let the system run repeatable, durable parts without the warping or layer-adhesion problems that plague smaller desktop machines under similar loads.

Materials Built for Demanding Work

Stratasys paired the F870 with a focused material lineup. Nylon 12CF carbon fiber is the standout. It delivers the stiffness and impact resistance needed for fixtures that see daily use on a production line. ASA and ABS handle more general-purpose tooling and prototyping. The new FDM ABS Draft in gray is aimed at speeding up prototype cycles where visual finish matters less than turnaround speed.

None of these materials are new to Stratasys. The real shift is that they are now packaged in a platform sized for production throughput rather than engineering lab work. That is a meaningful distinction for teams running five-day-a-week manufacturing operations.

Why Automotive Plants Care

Factory-floor additive manufacturing solves a specific bottleneck. When a production line needs a custom fixture, the traditional route is to machine it from aluminum, which can take days or weeks depending on shop capacity. For low-volume or frequently changing tooling, that lead time creates real disruption. FDM lets teams print the same part overnight or over a weekend and iterate on the design in hours instead of weeks.

Dallas Martin, an Additive Manufacturing Engineer at Toyota North America, put it plainly: the F870's build size, material performance, and industrial features match the kinds of manufacturing needs Toyota is looking to address. The language is cautious because these are early deployments, but the intent is clear. Toyota is not experimenting with hobbyist equipment. It is scaling additive manufacturing across production applications.

What It Means for Additive Manufacturing

The F870 is Stratasys' strongest statement yet that industrial FDM belongs on the production floor, not just in the prototyping lab. Competing large-format systems from BigRep, Raise3D, and Intamsys have been pushing into this space for years. Stratasys' advantage is its materials catalog and its decades of relationships with automotive and aerospace manufacturers. The F870 tightens that gap by removing the size and durability compromises that previously kept production-floor teams from scaling FDM beyond one-off prototypes.

The broader signal is that automotive manufacturing is crossing a threshold. Additive manufacturing is no longer a curiosity in Detroit and beyond. It is becoming standard production infrastructure, and the F870 is the kind of system that bridges the gap between experimental and operational. For Stratasys, that means defending its industrial FDM franchise against cheaper competitors. For automakers, it means another tool to shorten lead times and cut tooling costs without sacrificing the repeatability their production lines demand.