A 3D Printer Isn’t Cool. You Know What’s Cool? A 3D-Printing Factory

Since it first began to receive mainstream attention about 15 years ago, 3D printing has had a magical air to it, holding out the promise of turning every home into a miniature manufacturing hub while simultaneously upending the way industrial-scale factories operate. But 3D printers—which create objects by layering materials according to a plan sent by a computer—have gained a reputation for being unwieldy, expensive and slow. The utopian dream of the printers becoming a household appliance as ubiquitous as the personal computer has largely faded.

There has been more progress on industrial uses, although there, too, major players have fallen into a multiyear funk. Venture capitalists continue to dedicate significant resources to startups promising innovations to fix the technology’s underlying flaws. One particularly radical approach comes from Freeform Future Corp., a five-year-old startup based in Los Angeles. The company has raised $45 million so far from investors including Founders Fund, Threshold Ventures and Valor Equity Partners.