Stratasys Rolls Out 3D Printing Across 20 GM Plants

Stratasys showed up to IMTS 2026 in Chicago with three announcements stacked in six days. On September 9 the company launched the F870, a large-format FDM printer built for factory tooling. A few days later it listed what it planned to show at the show. Then, on opening morning, it said its additive manufacturing systems will roll out across over 20 General Motors plants in North and South America.

The GM deal is not a new relationship. The two companies have worked together for years, and GM plants already run Stratasys machines including the F900 to make tooling, fixtures, jigs, and end-use parts. What has changed is how the work spreads. A plant team spots a problem on its own line, designs a tool, prints it, checks that it works, and hands the file to other plants with the same problem. No central additive group approves requests. Corporate simply copies what worked.

On the show floor, Stratasys laid out its booth by process: FDM, PolyJet, Neo SLA, and SAF. An F3300 sat at the FDM end. At the other end, a glass cabinet held SAF parts, mostly small black production components each labelled with its application. A Boom Supersonic Overture model marked the aerospace section.

The GM display carried a placard beside each part giving the machine, material, build time, and material volume. Among the items on the table were an engine cord ergo tool printed in ASA on an F900 in eight hours, a center cap press tool built in 13.5 hours, and a composite layup tool that ran for 60 hours and 46 minutes. Two long Escalade rocker panel covers even carried GM part numbers. These are the tools a plant buys or makes all the time and rarely tracks as a programme. An eight-hour build is an overnight run on a machine the plant already owns. Across 20 plants, the number that moves is how often that happens without a purchase order.

The F870 targets the tooling that does not fit in smaller printers. Its build chamber measures 1,000 x 610 x 610 mm and is heated throughout. Stratasys says this is the longest heated build capacity in its class. The machine runs Nylon 12CF, ASA, ABS, and a new grey FDM ABS Draft meant for cheap iteration. Toyota Production Engineering in Georgetown, Kentucky, and Rivian in Plymouth, Michigan are the first named users. Both are evaluating the F870 for large fixtures, assembly tools, and inspection gauges that would otherwise be machined.

Stratasys has not published a price. The company describes the system as in customer evaluation ahead of commercial availability. Neither Toyota nor Rivian is described as having bought one.

A robot cell at the booth showed another angle. A FANUC CRX-30iA collaborative arm picked an automotive instrument panel component with a large black printed end-of-arm tool fitted with vacuum cups and clamps. The tool is printed in Nylon 12 Carbon Fiber. Stratasys is pitching this to plants where the gripper is complex, the geometry is awkward, or the tool is a one-off. The harder problem is trust. A plant will not bolt a printed gripper onto a robot unless it knows the tool will hold under load. Stratasys now runs designs through analysis software that checks strength against the part to be gripped and flags areas likely to fail.

Asked when 3D printing becomes the more expensive option, Stratasys automotive director Fadi Abro answered in volumes. At a million parts, printing one at a time loses because conventional manufacturing spreads tooling and line costs across the run. At around 3,000 parts, additive starts to compete. At ten parts, printing wins because the alternative is building expensive tooling for a handful of pieces and redoing it whenever the design changes. On payback, Abro claimed some applications recover the cost of the machine in about six months, after which the saved manufacturing cost becomes margin.

The GM release gives two quantities, over 20 facilities and dozens of applications, and neither says how many printers are installed. The F870 has no public price and is not generally available. But what has changed is who makes the decision. Ten years ago a corporate additive team justified a printer to a finance director. Now a GM manufacturing vice president describes tool-making as something the plant team owns, with corporate there to copy it. A vendor already inside that loop is hard to replace.