Velo3D Opens Forge 1, One of North America's Largest Metal 3D Printing Plants

Velo3D just turned a ribbon cutting into a statement about American manufacturing

On July 15, Velo3D opened Forge 1, a 289,000 square foot production campus in Livermore, California. The company calls it one of the largest metal additive manufacturing facilities in North America, and the pitch is less about square footage than about speed. Forge 1 is built to take parts that have already been qualified and push them into repeatable, at-scale production.

Why a single building matters

Metal 3D printing has spent years proving it can make a part. The harder problem is making that part thousands of times, on schedule, with the paperwork and traceability that aerospace and defense customers demand. Velo3D says Forge 1 closes that gap by combining engineering, qualification, digital production, and industrial-scale operations under one roof.

The campus sits alongside the company's Fremont headquarters, which stays focused on R&D, applications engineering, and process development. Together they form what Velo3D describes as an integrated path from concept to production.

The national security angle is the real story

Velo3D leans hard on its American pedigree, and not just for marketing. The company says it is the only U.S.-founded and U.S.-based OEM in the large-format laser powder bed fusion market with hardware, software, and systems all made and deployed in the United States and among allied partners. At the opening, attendees heard a recorded message from retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster stressing the importance of a strong domestic industrial base.

That framing matters because the customers Velo3D wants are in aerospace, defense, and energy. Those industries do not just want the cheapest part. They want a supplier they can audit, trust, and count on when a supply chain gets shaky.

What this means for the rest of us

For hobbyists and small shops, Forge 1 is a sign of where the industry is heading. The technology that started as a way to make one-off prototypes is now being packaged as production infrastructure. The same laser powder bed fusion process Velo3D runs at industrial scale is the cousin of the metal printers smaller labs are starting to afford.

Whether Velo3D can turn this campus into steady revenue is the open question. Metal additive manufacturing has a long history of impressive openings followed by slow commercial ramp-ups. Forge 1 is a bet that the demand is finally real, and that customers are ready to move from "we qualified it" to "we build it here."