Divergent Puts Its Own 12-Laser Printer at the Center of a Manufacturing Expansion

Divergent Technologies is shifting the foundation of its manufacturing business from off-the-shelf metal 3D printers to a machine it built itself. The Monolith One, unveiled in June, packs twelve 2kW lasers into a frame that stands over eight meters tall and six meters wide. It is not a product you can buy. It exists to run the company's Divergent Adaptive Production System, or DAPS, at volumes that traditional additive manufacturing machines cannot match.

A Printer Built for One Purpose

The build volume measures 700 by 700 by 835 mm. Total laser power hits 24 kW. The gas flow system moves up to 1,700 cubic meters per hour, which keeps the build chamber stable during long runs. Divergent spent 28 months designing and engineering the machine in-house under CTO Brian Erhartic.

Lukas Czinger, CEO and co-founder, put it plainly: "This is the first metal 3D printer designed ground up for scaled production of critical hardware. Every feature was engineered to maximize reliability, scalability and control."

From Nikon SLM to In-House Lasers

Until this year, Divergent relied on Nikon SLM Solutions' NXG XII 600 machines. It was the largest adopter of that 12-laser platform. But the company started developing its own printer without Nikon SLM's involvement. Czinger confirmed on LinkedIn earlier in 2026 that all new capacity being built and deployed would use the in-house machine, called the Divergent Evolutionary Printer.

The transition is gradual. Six Monolith One printers already run at Divergent's Torrance, California headquarters. The NXG machines continue handling current production programs, including missile airframes and automotive parts. Once those runs finish, the NXGs will support alloy development before being phased out.

Czinger told TCT Magazine: "We're not in a rush to take down the NXG 600s. There's work that they're continuing to do. We'll finish the production runs on a number of those programmes."

The Long Beach Factory

The second manufacturing site will sit in Long Beach, California. It spans 430,000 square feet and will eventually house 64 additional Monolith One systems. Combined with the Torrance operation, Divergent expects to operate 70 of these printers across a footprint of over 550,000 square feet.

The stated output numbers are striking: tens of thousands of 500-pound class missile airframes per year, or hundreds of thousands of smaller critical piece parts. The company also lists automotive subframes and suspension systems among its targets.

Divergent expects the expansion to add more than 1,000 direct jobs. More importantly for its defense customers, the entire supply chain is American, a point Czinger emphasized when the first machine was announced.

What This Means for Industrial AM

Monolith One is not for sale. That is the clearest signal that Divergent sees itself as a contract manufacturer first, not a printer vendor. By owning both the design software and the hardware, it can move customers between products by changing a digital file rather than retooling a factory.

The approach mirrors what other defense-focused manufacturers have tried to do with additive technology, but few have committed to building their own printers at this scale. If the Long Beach factory hits its throughput targets, Divergent will be one of the largest metal 3D printing operations in the world.