Velo3D opens 289,000-sq-ft Forge 1 metal-AM production campus in Livermore, CA with 40 printers, targets 100+
Hardware
Originally reported by 南极熊
Velo3D held a ribbon-cutting this week for Forge 1, a new 289,000-square-foot metal additive manufacturing production campus in Livermore, California. The facility opened with 40 metal 3D printers installed and running, with the company stating a target of scaling the fleet past 100 units. Forge 1 positions Velo3D as an operator of production capacity rather than only a machine vendor, running its own Sapphire-family laser powder bed fusion systems as a dedicated print farm. The Livermore location sits within the Bay Area cluster that has anchored Velo3D's aerospace and defense customer base since the company's founding.
The move reflects a broader shift among LPBF OEMs toward capturing part-production revenue directly instead of ceding it entirely to third-party service bureaus, a transition that matters more for near-term cash flow than any single machine-sale announcement given the company's post-SPAC balance-sheet history. A 40-to-100-plus printer scale-up is a meaningful bet on repeatable factory output rather than a demo cell, and it puts Velo3D in more direct competition with established production-service players serving aerospace and defense primes. Titanium and nickel-superalloy production for qualified aerospace components remains the segment where Velo3D has built its reputation, and a captive production campus gives the company a controlled environment to demonstrate consistent build-to-build quality at volume, which is the core ask from aerospace and defense buyers doing supplier qualification.
The practical test now shifts from ribbon-cutting to utilization: whether Velo3D can fill 100-plus printers with qualified, recurring part programs rather than intermittent orders, and whether its own quality-management infrastructure can support the multi-machine consistency that aerospace and defense qualification demands at that scale. Investors and customers should watch subsequent disclosures on printer utilization rates and named production contracts rather than the installed unit count alone.
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