It’s been a packed few weeks for additive manufacturing, spanning everything from desktop filament printers to aerospace hardware. Here’s a look at the stories shaping the 3D printing world right now.
Prusa Refreshes Its Entire Printer Lineup
Prusa Research announced that its whole current lineup — the XL, the CORE One, and the newer CORE One L — is getting a second-generation refresh, marked with a “+” designation. All new orders will ship with the updated hardware at no extra cost. The move follows a bumpy stretch for the CORE One: early Founders Edition kits shipped with soft steel nozzles prone to premature wear, an issue that buyers nicknamed “Nozzlegate.” Prusa has acknowledged the machining flaw, and the second-generation hardware appears aimed at putting the controversy behind it.
Elsewhere in the desktop space, Sovol unveiled the M1D, which it’s billing as the first open-source IDEX (independent dual-extrusion) printer with an integrated automatic tool changer — seven toolheads that swap in about five seconds, aimed at fast, low-waste multi-color and multi-material prints at a price well under closed-source tool-changing rivals.
A Fully 3D-Printed Rocket Engine Fires Up
In one of the more striking demonstrations of what additive manufacturing can do at the extremes, Indian aerospace startup Othisis — only two years old — test-fired a fully 3D-printed, cryogenic, reusable rocket engine. The team used selective laser melting (SLM) to produce the working prototype, a notable milestone for a young company and a reminder of how quickly metal additive manufacturing is maturing outside the established aerospace giants.
Research and Novelty Builds
The hobbyist and research side of the field stayed just as active. Engineers demonstrated sound-powered jet engines for micro drones, using ultrasonic frequencies to drive tiny fliers at roughly 12,000 RPM — and, notably, almost silently. At Open Sauce 2026 in San Mateo, California, the maker community showed off desktop full-color UV resin printers priced around $1,700 alongside flash-cured resin techniques and even a rideable, 3D-printed speeder bike, underscoring how far consumer-grade resin printing has come.
Industry and Materials Moves
Beyond desktop machines, the broader industrial side of additive manufacturing kept expanding. America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) awarded $10.5 million toward a Joint Additive Qualification for Sustainment project, aimed at qualifying more laser powder bed fusion and directed energy deposition suppliers for defense work. Materials science supplier EOS partnered with Constellium to expand the availability of aluminum alloys for additive manufacturing, while Stratasys marked the grand opening of a new 200,000-square-foot Americas headquarters in Minnetonka, Minnesota.
On the medical front, surgeons in Israel used a custom 3D-printed sternum implant to treat a cancer patient, tailored precisely to the patient’s anatomy, and researchers unveiled a new hydrophilic silicone formulation for 3D-printed contact lenses with an ultra-thin coating designed to preserve optical clarity. Even infrastructure is getting the additive treatment: Kind Designs’ large-scale 3D-printed “Living Seawalls,” built for marine ecosystem restoration, reported roughly $10 million in contracted revenue this year with a $175 million active pipeline.
Why It Matters
Between hardware refreshes from established players like Prusa, scrappy newcomers pushing tool-changing and aerospace hardware, and steady progress in medical and infrastructure applications, additive manufacturing continues to widen its footprint on both the hobbyist desk and the factory floor. It’s also a trend showing up in how people search for and discover this content — interest in 3D printing topics has been climbing sharply in recent search and traffic data, a sign that the audience for this kind of coverage keeps growing right along with the technology.
M3Dstore
Writer at M3D — exploring how 3D printing changes the way we learn, make and live.
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