Running circles
3DP War Journal #88
Last week, I published an article about the revolution happening in desktop 3D printing. About how for fifteen years, 3D printers were very demanding and therefore niche equipment - but today they are becoming a tool for everyone.
I wrote about how the user has changed: it’s no longer the maker, who builds the machine for the machine’s sake, but a person with an idea, looking for a tool capable of realizing it. And that it is precisely this change - cultural, not technological - that is driving the fastest-growing segment of the entire 3D printing industry today.
At the same time, two weeks ago, AMS 2026 took place - one of the most important conferences for companies in the industrial 3D printing sector. For years, AMS (Additive Manufacturing Strategies) has brought together CEOs of the largest companies, market analysts, and representatives of various industry organizations.
Literally just after the conference ended, I spoke with an acquaintance from a software company who had attended the event. When I asked him about his impressions, he said that largely everyone talked about the same things. Hardware, materials, applications. What the 3D printer does, what material is using, and what it can do that other methods can’t...
Software was secondary or none… Not to mention a holistic view - the ecosystem and the overall value for the user.
Nothing much has changed here. The problem is structural and deeper than anyone want to admit.
Industrial AM companies concentrate their narrative - and their budgets - around a few axes:
hardware (an ever-better machine, ever-larger print format, ever-higher precision),
materials (new polymers, new metal alloys, new certifications),
applications possible only on 3D printers (aerospace brackets, medical implants, prototypes),
ROI presented in spreadsheets
and industry certifications meant to open new doors.
Now make no mistake - all of this is important. Really. Without it, there would be no conversation at all.
But in doing all this, they consistently ignore everything else.
Software, which is still either archaic, or detached from the machine, or sold separately as a luxury add-on.
Machine and consumable material prices, which for years have remained at levels discouraging scaling. The customer understands the ROI on paper, but doesn’t buy because the entry barrier is too high.
Repositories of ready-made files, which essentially don’t exist - industrial 3D printing still assumes every user is an engineer striving at all costs to design a part from scratch.
And finally, the end-user themselves, who appears in this narrative mainly as a “customer” in revenue forecasts, not as the starting point for building an entire ecosystem.
But there’s more complex approach.
Bambu Lab is not an industrial company. But that’s precisely why it’s worth looking at.
A top-tier printer: packed with sensors, with AI monitoring the process in real-time, with automatic calibration and error detection.
Plus a wide range of materials and the AMS system (name similarity to the conference is coincidental) enabling multi-material printing without technical knowledge.
Plus Bambu Studio integrated with the Bambu Handy app, which lets you manage the printer from your phone like music streaming.
Plus MakerWorld with hundreds of thousands of free 3D models created by the community.
Plus Maker’s Supply with electronic and mechanical parts for assembling finished projects.
Plus Maker’s Lab with a repository of AI-based 3D modeling applications – for someone who has never opened a CAD program in their life.
Plus project crowdfunding and mechanisms to support creators.
When someone buys a Bambu Lab printer, they aren’t buying a printer. They are buying a complete, multi-layered ecosystem, in which the machine is just one of the nodes.
Bambu Lab understood that hardware is the easiest part of the whole system to copy. All the fundamental 3D printing technologies have already been invented.
True advantage doesn’t lie in the next extruder iteration or a new axis arrangement. It lies in the total user experience: cohesive, integrated, lowering the barrier to zero and building loyalty that the machine alone could never build.
Industrial AM companies are constantly on the move. Conferences, keynotes, new machine models, new applications, new certifications.
But on a macro scale - measured by revenue, market share, number of new users - they are still standing still.
I wrote this at the end of 2025 and I repeat it today: companies offering 3D printers without a strong software, material, and model ecosystem will find it increasingly difficult.
Not because competitors from the same segment will step into their place, but because someone from the outside will.
Someone who isn’t following the old tracks, but laying their own.