As with any type of contract manufacturing, additive manufacturing has benefits and risks. On the upside, it should provide immediate cost benefits, subsequent profit, and faster product development cycles. It enables businesses to expand their manufacturing capability, capacity, and knowledge, without taking on the full risk and responsibilities that come with owning equipment, purchasing materials and supplies, and hiring skilled labor. Your staff can be dedicated to developing new products and innovations.

Relatively unique to additive manufacturing, the digital files of your part can be sent to a 3D printer anywhere in the world. For example, 3D printing marketplace Craftcloud has manufacturing partners across the globe so that your part can be printed close to where it’s needed, which is especially an advantage if that location changes often. For example, if one of your customers needs 500 parts in California and another needs 300 parts in Florida, those parts can be manufactured locally for both customers, cutting down on shipping and time.

Certainly, the digital files of your parts to be injection molded also can be sent anywhere in the world, but because 3D printing is a tool-less manufacturing process (no molds, casts, etc.), produces little waste, is fast and efficient, and often requires no engineering expertise, the number of companies offering it is enormous.

Another advantage is the opportunity for mass customization. With 3D printing, every part in each batch can be customized simply by modifying the digital file. For example, serial numbers or unique identifiers can be added to the digital file, instead of requiring a second step after manufacturing.

On the other hand, there can be downsides to partnering with any kind of contract manufacturer. Delegating production means you have less control over the quality and you may risk leaking proprietary information or designs (although most manufacturers offer NDAs).

If you need 2,000 nylon parts 3D printed and sent to your product shop in Iowa, there are hundreds of companies that can handle the job. So how do you choose?

Here are some points to consider is picking the best industrial 3D printing service for you.

It’s a Relationship

Unlike one-off 3D printed prototypes or a handful of spare parts, serial additive manufacturing is a contractual relationship involving not insignificant amounts of funds. As such, you should feel comfortable with the people you’re working with. Ideally, you’ll have a person you’ll get to know, who answers the phone, and understands your project. Many 3D printing services offer streamlined online ordering where you never need to speak to a person, but for production volumes, you’ll want to make sure you can reach out.

Additive Manufacturers in Regulated Industries

There’s a growing number of contract additive manufacturers that specialize in particular regulated industries (such as aerospace and healthcare) where 3D printed parts need to have specific certifications and materials. Often the processes by which the parts are made must also be certified so the manufacturer itself holds certain certifications – Nadcap and ISO / IEC 17025 accredited, AS9100/9110 certified, ISO 14001 certified, ITAR and OASIS registered, etc. – that specifically denote the quality systems for part manufacturing.

Aerospace is one industry requiring that certified materials be used in certified processes to produce parts that are then highly quality checked to achieve more certifications. Contract additive manufacturers in this industry, include:

• Sintavia
• Morf3D
• Beehive3D
• Burloak Technologies
• Incodema3D
• APWorks
• Premium Aerotech
• i3DMFG

In medical device and implant additive manufacturing, there are equally stringent certification processes, requiring experienced and certified manufacturers, such as:

• Tangible Solutions
• Lima Corp.
• Croom Precision Medical

Depth of Capabilities & Services

The more technologies and materials your service provider offers the more choices you have. This is ideal if you have projects with different perimeters or varying needs. On the other hand, 3D printing service providers who specialize in just two or three technologies may know these capabilities intimately and have more projects under their belt. So, if you know your project requires Carbon Fiber Nylon using SLS technology, there are companies that specialize in just that type of production, but if you’re not sure which 3D printing technology fits your project, or if injection molding or casting is actually a better solution, seek out advice from a manufacturer with a broad range of services.

Guaranteed Quality

All manufacturers should stand by their work with quality guarantees, but look for opportunities to certify the quality before you mass-produce. Your additive manufacturing service partner should provide you with sample parts to test before production begins. You should also be clear on which types of quality checks are performed on your parts and how often.

Cost

How much your part production will cost should be available upfront. Some services, such as Craftcloud, provide you with project quotes from a range of manufacturers so you can pick the lowest cost if all other parameters are the same. Also, look for manufacturers that offer comparisons of project costs depending on material and technology so you can choose a lower-cost material or a more affordable technology and trade-off speed and part strength if necessary.

Materialise, the software, engineering, and 3D printing services company, uses its decades of experience in additive manufacturing to offer a range of services, including a focus on production-scale additive manufacturing.

Materialise’s most comprehensive offering is additive manufacturing for businesses and industry called “Materialise Manufacturing”. Their services are structured by industry, having set up a department for each major client group, including medicine, optics, and jewelry.

The company boasts one of the largest fleets of 3D printers in Europe, encompassing eight technologies and more than 30 materials, and 20 finishes. Its US office and production hub are in Plymouth, Mich.

Materialise designers and engineers give you the option to co-create new products and applications, from defining the scope and developing the prototypes to engineering the part and determining the final post-processing and assembly.

Mindware is Materialise’s consulting arm that helps manufacturers use AM to evolve, enhance, and de-risk their existing production lines.

The company also provides several business integration solutions, like manufacturing partnerships and white-label integration. This makes it easy for your firm to partner with Materialise to provide parts and services for your customers under your own name.

Especially useful if you’re new to additive manufacturing is the Materialise Academy Manufacturing training courses, where you can get the in-depth knowledge to make the most of 3D printing.

FIT is an additive manufacturer that’s been delivering custom metal and plastic parts and components globally for more than 20 years. They have facilities in the US, Japan, Russia, and Europe.

FIT offers a wide range of materials and the widest range of technologies on our list, along with several conventional manufacturing production technologies.

When using additive manufacturing for your series production, FIT says that it can ensure that your industry-specific standards and regulations are observed as well as your individual cost and quality requirements. FIT has standardized and certified processes that ensure consistent quality, regardless of whether you have 5, 500, or 5,000 products.

The company offers advice on how you can additively manufacture your series products in terms of design, material, and process in the most cost- and quality-optimized way possible or whether conventional processes or hybrid production offer better alternatives.

In another FIT plus, if desired, they will hand over the IP of the production process they use for your parts to you so that you can set up your own additive series production in your company when you’re ready to take production in-house.

Together with their development expertise for 3D printed components and their extensive post-processing possibilities, they offer metal additive manufacturing for everything from medical implants and aerospace parts to spare auto parts and sculpture.

FIT boasts that they make the entire value chain of 3D printing available to customers – from product design through to engineering, production, and post-processing. As a development and implementation partner, they’re more of a guide for additive manufacturing who can show you the best path to reach your project goal.

However, because they know additive manufacturing is not always the best solution in every case, they also have conventional technologies, such as CNC milling, injection molding, vacuum casting, or elastomer manufacturing.

Germany-based Protiq is one of the most robust service offerings on our list covering everything from design and engineering of your part, simulation of the digital design, through to the 3D printing and even CT scanning to ensure quality. They’ll check your digital file to ensure printability and even reverse engineer a part if you don’t have a digital file of it.

Partnering with Protiq is as complicated or simple as you want to make it. They offer both a quick web portal where you upload and configure your 3D digital files and receive quotes on your project from a number of suppliers and a full contract manufacturing relationship. Originally focusing on internal production for the parent company Phoenix Contact, Protiq has moved to prototyping and additive series production for a variety of industries.

If the products you’re looking to mass-produce are gears, conductors, or other popular parts, the company offers a quick part configurator. With just a few clicks, you can pick your design, material, size, and volume.

The company says its mass-production service consists of first defining the most important properties of the component and then setting the dimensional tolerances. Each of the manufacturing partners on the Protiq Marketplace is listed with its materials, technologies, and certifications. Protiq also operates its own manufacturing facilities in Germany, the US, and India.

Sybridge (formerly Fast Radius) calls itself a cloud manufacturing and digital supply chain company because its focus is as much on offering an infrastructure for engineers to design and develop 3D printed products as it is on additively manufacturing them.

The company’s Cloud Manufacturing Platform provides software applications, manufacturing solutions, and a network of factories to produce commercial-grade parts. Their manufacturing capabilities include a range of additive manufacturing, CNC machining, injection molding, urethane casting, and sheet metal methods.

The company has its own manufacturing facility in Chicago, but also partners with a global network of micro-factories.

Sybridge emphasizes its expert staff as much as its technology when it comes to taking a part design and helping you reimagine it for additive manufacturing in order to take advantage of all of the cost and time advantages. It offers experts in advanced digital design and simulation tools that allow you to optimize performance, consolidate assemblies, or create new products.

Stratasys is one of the largest 3D printer manufacturers in the world so it makes sense that they would also offer contract additive manufacturing, which they call Stratasys Direct Manufacturing. Their factory locations and international partners, however, don’t just offer parts and products printed on Stratasys machines, they offer a wide range of technologies, materials, post-processing, and quality control, alongside traditional manufacturing, such as CNC machining.

Their website offers mountains of resources on additive manufacturing (for free, no login), including case studies, design guidelines, an interactive material wizard to help you select the right plastics or metals for your application, and a “contact an engineer” button for more in-depth help.

Stratasys can print anything but is especially known for its ability to make full-color anatomical models, investment casting patterns, and jigs and fixtures. Stratasys recently acquired an anatomical modeling company called Axial3D that can produce custom models based on patient scans and data.

The company has seven manufacturing locations throughout the US and one in China, in addition to a global manufacturing network with partners in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East.

Sculpteo (now a part of the BASF group) originated in France and has an additional manufacturing plant in San Francisco. The company has grown dramatically over the years to move from offering one-off rapid prototyping with 3D printing to now offering true contract manufacturing to mass-produce parts from 1 to 10,000 units at its ISO 9001 factory and numerous locations. Although they primarily focus on Europe and the U.S., Sculpteo does provide worldwide shipping.

Sculpteo also has extensive design and consulting services, along with a learning and education library. It provides useful, up-to-date information for both beginners and 3D printing experts.

Sculpteo serves a wide range of industries, but they particularly cater to automotive, medical, and eyewear sectors.

Their material selection is quite large, and available technologies include all major methods. Each material is accompanied by plenty of information regarding the technical limitations, the appropriate uses, and design guidelines to help you optimize your parts. Sculpteo’s 3D printing service can be accessed via Craftcloud.

Oerlikon AM is an integrated design-for-manufacturing and series production partner for your 3D printed parts, which means their design and R&D teams can help turn your concepts into reality even if you have no prior knowledge of additive manufacturing. They can help you identify the components best suited for production by AM and build the business case for using the technology. Oerlikon says it can even train your design and engineering teams to think outside conventional technologies and to understand the potential of AM in your business.

The company currently conducts production-volume additive manufacturing for aerospace, medical, power generation, and automotive.

Oerlikon is a division of the Swiss technology giant OC Oerlikon with production centers in Europe and the US plus a distribution center in Australia. From these three centers, Oerlikon is able to serve customers on all continents. The company is also a leading AM research hub for academic and industrial partnerships in the EU and the US.

BeamIT is a 3D printing company with nearly 60 dedicated additive manufacturing systems distributed across six facilities between Italy and UK. It’s owned by Sandvik, which is one of the largest additive manufacturers for metal parts in Europe.

Both Sandvik and BeamIT offer design services, in addition to extensive advanced post-processing and testing options. In 2020, BeamIT acquired a significant stake in Pres-X, a start-up in post-production processes for 3D printing. In the same year, BeamIT acquired AM service bureau ZARE, and in 2021 acquired 3T Additive Manufacturing.

BeamIT engineers guide you through the AM process from design and material selection through production and post-processing.

Ricoh, the 80-year-old multinational information and manufacturing company, launched its 3D printing division in 2015.

It provides a full range of end-to-end solutions for additive manufacturing and says it works closely with customers to understand how additive manufacturing could help grow their business. Whether it’s removing tooling costs, slicing product development time, or achieving mass customization, Ricoh has a staff of experts to help.

Ricoh has invested millions of dollars in a fleet of state-of-the-art 3D printers and a comprehensive range of engineering materials. Recently, Rocoh expanded its Customer Experience Centre at Ricoh UK Products Limited to accelerate co-creation with customers and partners in the manufacturing industry. The facility will particularly benefit those considering using metal binder jetting 3D printers for electric vehicles and electric aircraft to create new value, such as improving the energy efficiency of electric components for motors and batteries.

Think 3D is India’s largest integrated rapid prototyping service provider offering 3D printing, 3D scanning, CNC machining, and vacuum casting services all under one roof. The company offers 3D printing on demand in as fast as a day using FDM, SLA, SLS, MJF, LPBF 3D printing technologies all in-house. It’s EOS M290 metal 3D printer is available to print in aluminum, maraging steel, stainless steel, Inconel, cobalt chrome, titanium.

As a one-stop shop, Think 3D also offers custom painting and post-processing, as well as 3D scanning and design services. Quality control and measurement processes include a detailed inspection of both 2D & 3D providing a full range of easy-to-understand reporting. The company’s GOM measurement systems deliver the full-field scan data and sufficient resolution needed for genuine full-surface inspection, allowing the delivery of complete surface color-deviation maps, GD&T inspection back to drawing FAI and LAI and trend analysis across multiple-part inspection. The CMM measurement services provide measurement data for critical regulated industries.

Fathom is one of the largest 3D printing-focused contract manufacturers in the US with 12 manufacturing centers across the country. When is come to additive manufacturing technology, Fathom features a full menu, including PolyJet, FDM, SLS, SLA, DMLS and MJF, plus practically all materials from polymers to metals.

The engineering and design team at Fathom is a group of experts with a wide range of digital manufacturing experience. You can contract these engineers to support your in-house design team throughout the product development process from prototyping to production.

Fathom provides extensive know-how on designing for additive manufacturing with an affinity for applying additive in unique ways that address cost, time, and geometry constraints of traditional processes, the company says.

Specializing in industrial 3D printing, short-run manufacturing, and high-volume production services, Forecast 3D also offers a design service to walk you through product development for 3D printing, which saves time, money, and materials.

The company operates more than 45 industrial 3D printers in-house at three facilities in the US, offering a diverse range of additive manufacturing technologies. Forecast 3D owns one of the largest fleets of HP multi-jet fusion 3D printers, and also offers resin and metal technology along with urethane casting and CNC machining services.

Forecast 3D was purchased in 2019 by GKN Powder Metallurgy and, since that time, has expanded its metal additive manufacturing.

Prototal ­Industries, a leading company for polymer additive manufacturing in the Nordics, recently expanded into Austria, Switzerland, and Germany by purchasing rival 1zu1 and added Italy to its market with the purchase of Prosilas. In Nov. 2022, it acquired the Swedish additive manufacturing company Addema AB.

Prototal aims to focus on additive manufacturing for serial production with the largest resin printer capacity in Northern Europe that can produce series involving several thousand parts at short notice.

The company says when it comes to the production of your plastic parts, it puts a wide portfolio of different technologies at your disposal enabling you to select either additive or traditional depending on the part and your needs.

Prototal also boasts an extensive menu of post-processing options for 3D printed parts from sanding, barrel polishing, and dying, along with assembly, labeling, and packaging.

Quickparts, founded in 1999, offers complete on-demand manufacturing services, from 3D printed metal and plastic parts to traditional CNC, injection molding, and cast urethane models.

They have experienced engineers, dedicated project managers, and five well-equipped facilities needed to handle your low-volume production, although for mass-production it relies on its casting and injection molding services.

The company has engineers stationed in several facilities around the globe and has decades of manufacturing experience. Because it offers a range of technologies, it can help you choose the right process for your custom parts. You don’t have to worry about whether your design file will produce the best possible result because Quick Parts’ engineers review your design files to catch potential issues before the printing begins.

Objectify Technologies provides a complete range of additive manufacturing solutions in plastics, as well as metals all in-house through its state-of-the-art, manufacturing facility in Delhi, India.

The company claims to have printed more than 1 million parts since its founding in 2013. Its in-house design team is well versed in the designing and simulation packages from various software providers and uses that knowledge in design for additive manufacturing (DfAM), topology optimization, and simulation for creating customer solutions.

The company says it aims to provide a facelift to the current manufacturing processes in India and caters to industries like aerospace, automotive, space, oil & gas, die mold, and healthcare, among others.

Chinese manufacturer BLT (Bright Laser Technology) serves the metal additive manufacturing market primarily in Asia, but they deliver for international clients as well. BLT has established itself, particularly in the aerospace industry, working with Airbus in 2021. All in all, the company has clients in Asia, Europe, and the US.

They’re not just about airplanes, though. BLT serves a wide variety of other industries, including automotive, medical, dental, and artistic segments.

With its proprietary printers, BLT is able to harness several technologies for various applications, including selective laser melting, laser solid forming, and wire arc additive manufacturing. They also have a perfectly adequate list of available materials and are the only company on this list printing with tungsten.

On top of metal 3D printing, BLT offers a slew of additional services, including design consultation, testing, and quality assurance. BLT is even able to provide its customers with customized process parameters and software solutions that are tailored to the customer’s specific needs.

For those active in Chinese or wider Asian markets, or the aerospace industry, BLT offers a comprehensive service package.

Craftcloud is a 3D printing service marketplace created by us here at All3DP and launched in 2016. In response to the growing number of 3D printing services for both prototypes and production, Craftcloud launched its marketplace platform that enables you to set your project perimeters and receive quotes from a range of vetted 3D printing service providers worldwide, including several on this list.

Craftcloud partners with more than 100 of the top additive manufacturers globally, including Materialise, Sculpteo, and Jawstech. Due to its wide range of partners, Craftcloud can offer more technologies and materials than most. This is especially useful if you’re looking to conduct comparisons. For example, upload your design file, select a technology, materials, and quantity, receive quotes, then select a different technology and material. It’s the easiest way to compare additive manufacturing technologies.

Xometry is a US-based contract manufacturer and prototyping service that offers injection molding, CNC machining, die casting, sheet metal fabrication, as well as 3D printing through a network of supplier partners worldwide.

In contrast to most of the entries on this list, Xometry is an online platform that aims to fulfill your 3D printing order with the manufacturer that best meets your criteria for speed, cost, location, and other perimeters you can select. Similar to Craftcloud, you can compare project quotes on Xometry’s Instant Quoting Engine to find the right fit.

Because Xometry offers both traditional and additive manufacturing, it’s an ideal place to compare the two. Upload your part and select injection molding, then upload the same part and select additive manufacturing. Another possible advantage of the Xometry approach is having a backup manufacturer if one is busy or unavailable, to ensure that your production projects aren’t delayed.

GoProto and RE3DTech merged in 2022 to create a challenger to the larger firms above. GoProto made its name offering an end-to-end solution for product development and production needs “turning your ideas into reality,” the company says.

GoProto offers custom manufacturing of metal and plastic parts, using 3D printing and other manufacturing methods. Its services include industrial design model making and one of its strengths is helping you determine what process best meets your design, lead time, and budget goals.  Working within medical, aerospace, industrial, automotive, and many other industries, GoProto says it’s a rapid manufacturing company with customer service at its core.

GoProto is another large provider of HP multi-jet fusion 3D printing and, in 2020, GoProto acquired 3D Systems’ Australian on-demand manufacturing facility, the largest 3D digital manufacturer in that region.