Ahead of the 2025 AMUG Conference, 3D Printing Industry caught up with leading automotive authority, Toyota’s Dallas Martin.
Dallas Martin’s career path in industrial 3D printing is deeply rooted in a practical, hands-on approach to polymers and manufacturing. Now an additive manufacturing engineer at Toyota Motor Corporation, Martin’s journey began with an early exposure to plastics and 3D printing, evolving through aerospace and defense before settling into the automotive industry.
A formative experience with an early Stratasys machine set him on his path: “My mentor threw a book at me and said, ‘If you can remember these glass transition temperatures and how these polymers work, I’ll let you play with that machine.’”
After technical training and experience with aerospace components, including work on the Minuteman missile project, Martin transitioned to automotive, spending 15 years at Johnson Controls International (JCI) before joining Toyota. “They had a lot of low-hanging fruit,” Martin says. “It was very traditional manufacturing—big, heavy fixtures that required multiple people to handle. I thought, ‘You could 3D print that and make it so much easier.’”
At the time, Toyota’s use of additive manufacturing was limited to prototyping, primarily for aesthetic validation rather than functional parts. Martin joined as a contractor and was tasked with setting up a maker space to explore AM’s potential. The initiative, later known as TILT Lab (short for shifting perspectives), quickly proved its value.
By 2019, Martin had expanded Toyota’s AM capabilities from a few FDM and PolyJet machines to a more comprehensive suite, including Stratasys F900, 770, and 450 systems. However, the increasing workload demonstrated a need for more than just additional printers. During a vacation, he wrote a white paper proposing an expansion that would introduce 26 more printers spanning powder bed fusion (PBF), SLA, DLP, and high-speed sintering. The result was a 6,000-square-foot additive lab integrated within Toyota’s production engineering division.
“We don’t design or build the cars. We develop the processes, tooling, and fixtures that make sure they go out the door with the highest quality,” he explains. “We built a full quarter panel for a car, cutting lead times by 30%,” Martin says. “If you can accelerate vehicle development by even a few weeks, the entire manufacturing schedule moves forward. It’s like a train—when you ease one bottleneck, everything ahead of it moves faster.”
Toyota’s AM deployment initially concentrated on improving production efficiency—reducing lead times for tooling, improving ergonomics, and optimizing manufacturing aids. The strategy quickly proved its effectiveness. Toyota remains methodical. “We don’t want to put 10 parts on a car today and remove them tomorrow,” Martin emphasizes. “We want to develop sustainable, long-term applications for AM.”
Toyota’s AM strategy now extends beyond production tooling, with efforts to integrate functional 3D printed components into vehicles. Materials research is a key focus, ensuring compliance with stringent automotive standards. “We’re studying every material available to determine where we can and cannot use it,” Martin says.
Industrializing Additive Manufacturing: Toyota’s Challenges and Strategic Approach
The AM industry is currently in a turbulent period, with consolidation, patent disputes, and a perceived lack of industrial focus slowing progress. “The industry is in a fog right now,” Martin says. “Every time we go to a conference, it’s all about manufacturing, but a lot of these machines can’t even be placed in a factory because they don’t have the right safety features or industrial reliability.”
Toyota routinely beta-tests AM systems, often dismantling them to assess their suitability for the factory floor. Many fail to meet essential requirements. “We tell them, ‘This won’t fly in a factory. This isn’t shielded. This won’t resist dust.’ The machines live hard lives,” he explains. The lack of automation in existing systems is another major issue. “Automation isn’t just a robotic arm pulling a part out—it needs to be built into the software and machine itself so we don’t need an army of additive engineers to keep them running.”
“In automotive, a 10-minute line stoppage can cost millions,” says Martin. “If a machine requires a four-day service call, it’s getting shoved in the corner. No manufacturer will allow their operations to be dependent on something that fragile.”
While the industry continues to emphasize metal AM, Martin argues that polymer applications remain vastly underexplored. “Everybody screams ‘metal, metal, metal,’ but we haven’t even scratched the surface of polymers yet,” he says. Adopting AM for end-use vehicle parts requires materials that can meet Toyota’s stringent durability and quality standards. “We need materials that fit our needs—not just what the AM industry wants to sell,” Martin adds.
“For high-temperature, high-wear applications like powertrain manufacturing, we’re moving away from metal and into advanced photopolymer processes.”
Using technologies such as Stratasys’ Origin One and Nexa3D’s high-speed resin systems, Toyota has streamlined the production of intricate robotic grippers and end effectors. “Those machines stay running constantly, producing parts that would have been impossible to manufacture traditionally,” Martin says.
Beyond powertrain, Toyota has expanded AM use in factory automation, including conveyor systems and assembly fixtures. Powder bed fusion (PBF) has allowed the company to create replacement components in-house, cutting lead times from as much as a year down to a few weeks.
“Toyota has always had a strong supplier network, but sending a fixture out to a vendor can take 10 to 13 weeks—sometimes even six months or more,” Martin says. “Now, we can produce that fixture internally, cut lead times by 80%, and create a digital inventory where we can just press a button and print a replacement.”
“We study metal AM closely, and we’d like to bring in machines just to understand the process better,” Martin says. “But right now, it’s where polymers were 30 years ago—it’s still in its infancy.”
The complexity of metal AM supply chains remains a barrier. “There are about 170 different metal powder suppliers, and everyone has their own processing method,” Martin notes. “It’s not standardized, and the parts still require significant post-processing—machining, sanding, blasting—before they’re usable.”
The Role of AM in Electric Vehicles
With the automotive industry’s increasing focus on battery-electric vehicles and hybrid powertrains, AM is playing a role in quality control and assembly validation.
“We’ve explored AM for prototype battery cell production, working with GE Additive and others,” Martin says. “It’s not perfect yet, but it’s a start.” While 3D printed batteries are still in early research phases, Toyota has found AM particularly useful in prototyping assembly processes.
“We 3D print battery prototype models at full size to ensure assembly feasibility,” Martin explains. “It allows us to test handling, shipping, and worker ergonomics in a way that digital models in AR and VR can’t fully capture. The ability to physically interact with a prototype before mass production helps us catch problems early.”
Despite industry enthusiasm, Martin remains skeptical that 3D printing will dominate automotive production in the near future.
“If you’re asking about the long-term vision—yes, I can imagine it,” he says. “But in my lifetime? No. It’s going to take an enormous amount of development and heavy lifting. People don’t realize how much foundational work happens behind the scenes every day.”
The Knowledge Gap in AM and unlocking 3D printing’s potential
One of the biggest challenges facing the AM industry is the transfer of expertise.
“There’s a disconnect between the people designing these systems and the people actually using them,” Martin says. “Too often, AM companies focus on executive boards and don’t listen to the engineers running the machines every day.”
The consumer 3D printing boom has also created misconceptions about the complexity of industrial AM. “Hobby printers have made it seem like 3D printing is plug-and-play, but there’s a massive difference between printing a figurine at home and printing an automotive part with thousands of surfaces and security requirements,” Martin says.
Security is another critical issue. “We can’t run open-source software on our production printers because we don’t know what’s embedded in it, where the data is being sent, or who last modified the code,” he says. “We’re dealing with data that’s five years ahead of production—we can’t afford a security lapse.” The extent to which security is a priority is underscored during our call, with Toyota taking the precaution of disabling webcams to avoid accidental disclosure of products.
Toyota remains deeply embedded in the AM research community, regularly attending trade shows, collaborating with other OEMs, and pushing for standardization. “You have to stay involved,” Martin says. “For years, Toyota wasn’t in the news about AM, and now we’re everywhere—that’s because it takes someone pushing and driving the effort forward.”
The AM industry has long focused on materials development, but Martin believes software is now the limiting factor. “For years, it was all about material, material, material,” he says. “But hardware is already capable—some of these machines were ahead of their time 20 years ago. What’s missing is the software to fully exploit their potential.”
Martin points to advancements in legacy systems. “3D Systems hasn’t radically changed its SLA machines, yet with better software, they’re now achieving things once thought impossible—like additional laser control and enhanced projection in DLP printing.”
AMUG Conference: The Critical Meeting Point for AM Innovation
Martin’s commitment to AM extends beyond Toyota, with his long-standing involvement in the Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG). The annual AMUG Conference, known for its deep technical discussions, is a critical hub for knowledge-sharing among AM professionals.
“I’ve been attending AMUG since 2014 or 2015, and I’ve saved every single lanyard and badge,” Martin says. “It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come.”
Unlike larger industry conferences dominated by sales pitches, the AMUG Conference fosters direct conversations between engineers and users. “I get bombarded with vendor messages on LinkedIn every day—people I don’t even know trying to sell me something,” he says. “At the AMUG Conference, it’s different. You sit on a bus, start talking to someone about a machine, and within minutes, you’re getting real, unfiltered insights from another user.”
The camaraderie at the conference, he says, is unlike anything in the industry. “We’re not just colleagues. When I see my friends at BMW or Stratasys, it’s hugs, not handshakes. AMUG is about building real relationships, and that’s why it works.”
“The magic isn’t in the machines,” he says. “It’s in the people who push this industry forward every day.”
The 2025 AMUG Conference takes place from March 30 – April 3. Check out the detailed conference program and join the industry in Chicago.
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