How companies can leverage additive manufacturing without high investment – Interview with Shapeways CEO Marleen Vogelaar

Shapeways is a digital manufacturing platform that provides programmatic solutions for a wide range of industries. By leveraging regional and agile additive manufacturing technologies, the company enables businesses to bring small- to medium-volume production-grade parts to market efficiently and manage them throughout their lifecycle. With a focus on flexibility and scalability, Shapeways aims to be a key partner in building sustainable and resilient supply chains, supporting innovation and economic growth. In an interview with 3Druck.com, CEO Marleen Vogelaar discusses Shapeways’ approach to making additive manufacturing more accessible and ensuring high quality production across technologies.

The company offers 12 additive manufacturing technologies and a large suite of materials and finishes, allowing businesses to produce both prototypes and end-use parts with high precision and customization. Serving industries such as automotive, aerospace, architecture, medical technology, and semiconductors, Shapeways provides solutions tailored to engineers, startups, and large enterprises.

Shapeways integrates digital workflows into its production infrastructure to enhance efficiency and quality control. Its manufacturing processes are designed to optimize production costs while maintaining high standards for reliability and traceability. As part of its strategy to expand digital capabilities, Shapeways acquired Thangs, a 3D file-sharing platform, in December 2024. This acquisition aims to create an ecosystem that supports designers in sharing and monetizing their digital models while streamlining the path from concept to production.

Previously a publicly traded company, Shapeways filed for bankruptcy in July 2024. Following this, a new management team, composed of former staff and executives, acquired its assets, including the Eindhoven production facility. The restructured company now focuses on long-term economic sustainability while continuing to provide businesses with scalable, high-quality additive manufacturing services.

Interview with Marleen Vogelaar

In her interview with 3Druck.com, CEO Marleen Vogelaar discusses Shapeways’ role in democratizing access to additive manufacturing for businesses of all sizes. She also highlights the company’s strategies for ensuring consistent quality across various materials and technologies.

As a 3D printing service provider, how do you see your role in increasing access to additive manufacturing, especially for smaller businesses?

AM remains a complex process that requires a specialist skill set to get the best results, from understanding materials and optimizing designs for 3D printing to managing production variables.

This skills gap is often a significant hurdle for companies wanting to access these technologies, especially as they are getting started. Service providers like Shapeways have technicians working at scale with multiple AM technologies, giving companies of all sizes access to best-in-class talent from the start of their journey.

Adopting AM in-house can also put pressure on CapEx budgets. The machine cost is only one factor: space to house the machines and ancillaries, materials handling, post-processing, HVAC systems, vibration damping, and gas supply—all add cost, and that’s before you even get to hiring technicians and handling waste management. Don’t forget you might have to repeat this for each technology you want to access. Working at scale with multiple technologies, Shapeways is able to produce parts more efficiently and allows customers to focus on the outcomes: consistent, high-quality parts produced on demand, without minimum order quantity constraints.

Proving the viability of AM is key for small companies, and being able to run a limited trial through a service provider can give an organization-wide confidence boost to drive adoption. We encourage companies to look for areas where AM could be the right solution and give it a go. Once one problem has been successfully solved, new opportunities often follow.

How does Shapeways ensure consistent quality and accuracy of 3D-printed parts across its range of materials and technologies?

We ensure consistent quality and accuracy of 3D-printed parts through a strong commitment to operational excellence and in-process quality control (IQC). By implementing rigorous quality checks at every stage of production—from material selection to post-processing—we minimize defects and ensure each part meets precise specifications. Our comprehensive Quality Management System (QMS) is applied throughout our global operations, ensuring standardization, traceability, and continuous improvement. This system allows us to systematically monitor workflows, helping us maintain consistency across different materials and technologies.

We further enhance quality by performing regular maintenance and calibration on our advanced 3D printing equipment, ensuring optimal performance and minimizing variations in production. Our proprietary ERP/MES software, specifically tailored for additive manufacturing, enables seamless workflow automation, real-time tracking, and data-driven decision-making. Additionally, we operate our own distribution centers, integrating final quality inspections before shipment to ensure that our customers receive defect-free parts. By combining strict process controls, advanced software, equipment reliability, and in-house distribution, we consistently deliver high-precision, high-quality 3D-printed parts across a diverse range of materials and technologies.

Additive manufacturing has advanced significantly in recent years. Which innovations or technological breakthroughs do you consider particularly transformative?

While AM has definitely advanced in recent years, the fundamentals haven’t really changed. We haven’t seen many genuine breakthroughs, but we have witnessed incremental improvements in speed, capacity, and material selection. Ultimately, however, the same opportunities and challenges remain.

The focus on the industrialization of AM has been a major trend, signified by a shift away from prototyping toward scaled production of end-use parts. This perfectly aligns with Shapeways’ focus: yes, we can produce prototypes and one-off parts in a large suite of materials and post-processing options, but we can also play the role of the digital manufacturing engine behind some of the biggest OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers in medical, aerospace, and automotive industries. That requires not only scale but also a deep understanding of the requirements of real manufacturing. AM is often promoted as a kind of manufacturing magic—something different and special. In reality, it’s a widespread production technology in waiting, with dozens—maybe hundreds—of real-world use cases today.

The integration of AI into part design, scheduling, process optimization, materials development, and more could be a genuinely transformative development in the near future, and we are excited by what we have seen in this area so far.

Looking ahead, what impact do you foresee additive manufacturing having on various industries and possibly on society as a whole?

The million-dollar question! We don’t believe there is an industry or sector that won’t be impacted by AM in the future; as with all predictions, it’s the timeline that poses the challenge. For some, like the often-touted dental aligners and hearing aids, AM has already revolutionized the production process and improved patient outcomes. For others, like aerospace, the high levels of regulation and manufacturing legacy mean that adoption is necessarily slower. Any manufacturing operation that relies on a supply chain (which is all of them!) has the potential to be impacted by distributed manufacturing facilitated by AM.

We recently acquired the file-sharing service Thangs as part of our mission to bring Shapeways home. Through Thangs, people can share their 3D designs in the most niche areas imaginable! We are constantly astounded by the community’s creativity and depth. Through these communities, AM will have an impact in ways we can’t even imagine. That’s the really exciting part of being at Shapeways—you never know what part is going to be produced next! It could be a run of mechanical parts or a one-off figure for a niche online community.

From a societal perspective, AM should be like any other manufacturing technology—where the impacts are huge but largely unseen. General consumers appreciate personalization, speed, and cost, but they don’t care about the “how.” We care about the how, and that’s enough.

Here you can find further information about Shapeways.