Stratasys

Stratasys grew out of a home experiment. Founder Scott Crump built a toy frog for his daughter with a glue gun loaded with polyethylene and wax, and the idea became fused deposition modeling, the extrusion-based 3D printing process the company patented and commercialized starting in 1989. Decades of acquisitions, including Objet, MakerBot, and Origin, turned Stratasys into one of the larger names in industrial additive manufacturing, with dual headquarters in Minnesota and Israel. Its aerospace and defense business sits on top of that foundation and has become one of the more mature slices of the company's work, largely because aircraft interiors were an early, natural fit for 3D-printed parts that need to be lightweight and flame-retardant rather than load-bearing. The company's flagship large-format printer, the F900, comes in three configurations aimed squarely at that market: a base F900, an F900 Pro built for repeatable production runs in Ultem 9085 resin, and an F900 AICS, short for Aircraft Interiors Certification Solution, which adds traceability and process controls needed for flight-worthy parts.

The older Fortus 900mc line, which the F900 descends from, is still referenced in the industry as the workhorse that established Stratasys in industrial FDM manufacturing. Materials are as much a part of the pitch as the printers. Stratasys develops high-performance polymers such as the Antero family of PEKK-based materials for parts that need to handle heat, chemical exposure, or structural loads beyond what standard thermoplastics can take. In 2025 the company introduced two new Antero grades, Antero 800NA and Antero 840CN03, developed in partnership with an unusually broad group of aerospace and defense organizations, including Boeing, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies, the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, the U.S. Air Force, and the National Institute for Aviation Research. That kind of joint material qualification work is slow and expensive, but it is what lets a 3D-printed part actually make it onto a military aircraft rather than stay a prototype.

Data security has become part of the product line too. Stratasys' ProtectAM technology addresses the practical problem of controlling technical data around a part's design and manufacturing process, built to meet Department of Defense Security Technical Implementation Guide requirements, which matters for any supplier printing parts tied to export-controlled or classified programs. Stratasys trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker SSYS and has weathered a rocky few years financially, including a 2023 net loss, as the broader 3D printing industry worked through a post-pandemic pullback in capital spending. Even so, aerospace and defense remains one of the segments the company continues to invest in, betting that certified, flight-qualified printing, not just faster prototyping, is where its long-term value lies.