The Rise and Fall of a 3-D Printing Empire

In the winter of 2020, Desktop Metal, a high-flying start-up just outside Boston, unveiled an industrial 3-D printer so powerful that it sounded like magic. The printer could make metal parts for jet engines, trucks and medical implants “at speeds so unheard-of,” one commercial declared, “that some people thought it wasn’t possible.”

There was just one problem: That printer, the P-50, never worked well enough to sell.

It was quietly shelved after going out to only a few customers, an early warning of how much the 3-D printing industry’s rapid growth relied on promises that have not come to fruition.

For decades, people in the 3-D printing world heralded a new industrial revolution that would replace old machines on factory floors with sleek new printers that could cheaply and efficiently transform the way that nearly everything was made.

While 3-D printers have become indispensable for certain products — customized dental implants and satellite components, for instance — adoption of the technology has lagged expectations. High interest rates, costly raw materials used by the machines and the sheer complexity of the printers have made many companies shy away from buying them.

The global market for additive manufacturing, a term for industrial 3-D printing, was $24.2 billion in 2025, according to Wohlers Associates, an industry advisory firm. That was nowhere near the $47.7 billion the industry was expected to be when Desktop debuted the P-50.

Today, the industry focuses less on moonshot products and more on making sure customers are getting good use out of the machines they already have.

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