Contract Manufacturer Uptive Makes Outsourced AM a Productive Enterprise Solution

“In the early days, there was this entrepreneurial spirit with AM. There were so many things we didn’t know, and we were willing to try anything,” says Jim Teuber of Uptive Manufacturing. “But now, additive is an enterprise solution. We have to take a strategic view of production.”

Teuber is director of additive manufacturing at Uptive Manufacturing, where he oversees the company’s Libertyville, Illinois, AM production operation. But his experience in AM dates back to his initial startup Re3DTech, a business launched nine years ago that has since transformed into Uptive. 

As an early adopter of HP’s Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) platform in the Midwest (and just the second U.S. business to place a deposit on one of these machines, Teuber says), Re3DTech was deep in the weeds on learning and developing best practices for how to use this technology. And it was doing so as an independent manufacturer — something Teuber believed would become unsustainable when his co-founder and business partner retired.

“Additive has got to be a capacity play,” Teuber says. He knew that change would have to come to the business in order to grow, not just keep up with, additive production.

Additive manufacturing does have economies of scale for users — but they are different than those of other processes. Operating more than a dozen MJF printers with 50 build units enables Uptive to meet customer demand and also leverage bulk material discounts, automated unpacking and other strategies that only make sense above a certain volume of production. 

So, Re3DTech partnered with Core Industrial to be the private equity firm’s first acquisition to form Uptive Manufacturing in 2021. Its assets were consolidated with a second acquisition, GoProto, to create the Illinois additive manufacturing facility I visited in May 2025. Later acquisitions brought traditional manufacturing options into the fold; today, the company also includes Phoenix Proto Technologies, an aluminum moldmaking and injection molding business in Michigan, and Standfordville Machine & Manufacturing, a high-precision CNC machine shop located in Poughkeepsie, New York. Partnerships help to support production overseas as well. The businesses are connected through the overarching Uptive structure, but operate fairly independently day-to-day.

The goal, Teuber says, is to be a “single-source supplier” to customers, which range from global OEMs down to small businesses and independent inventors. The company’s specialty is helping each client get to the right solution, across the business or even beyond Uptive if the solution isn’t one that it offers.

“The more we understand, the more we can get people on the right path,” Teuber says.

The “right path” can evolve throughout Uptive’s relationship with a customer. For this customer, the company initially produced just two parts; it now 3D prints 200 different part numbers, many of which have been iterated for continuous improvement in that time. 

Sales engineers work closely with customers to discern their needs and direct jobs to the right facility and process, sometimes walking two paths simultaneously. This strategy might apply, for instance, to a customer launching a new product that will ultimately require injection molded parts, but that is still in the development stage.

“We can work to line up molding production at Phoenix in Michigan as prototyping is progressing here in Illinois with additive,” Teuber says. “That’s a contrast to the Re3D days when we’d help a customer develop something, and then wave goodbye when they tooled up for injection molding.”

The Capacity Play

The additive manufacturing arm of Uptive does more product development and prototyping work than its sister businesses, but Teuber has seen the balance tip since the RE3DTech days to lean more on production. This is the scale play for additive as he sees it — higher margin development work that can attract and offset lower margin production work. 

Uptive has 50 different build units for its MJF printers, each dedicated to a specific material. 

Making additive production effective requires having enough capacity to enable both reliable production and cost efficiency with this process. Uptive has streamlined its operations by embracing just a few additive production technologies.

A mix of both automated and manual postprocessing equipment is used to clean and finish 3D printed parts for customers.

The primary additive production platform is still Multi Jet Fusion (MJF). Today, Uptive Manufacturing operates 13 MJF printers serviced by 50 swappable build units for continuous production. Builds are unpacked at one of 10 postprocessing stations. These stations and the build units are dedicated to specific materials — the company prints with half a dozen MJF powders including nylon, polypropylene (PP), TPA and TPU.  

MJF parts are further postprocessed with bead blasting, shot peening, vapor smoothing via one of two AMT PostPro 3D systems and sometimes dyed. Parts for certain applications may receive a Cerakote finish or additional steps performed by outside suppliers.

Operating this many MJF printers and the range of supporting equipment enables Uptive to efficiently batch parts and manage its workflow. Parts are generally timed to print overnight, so that the machines can be unloaded first thing when employees arrive at the facility. The size of the fleet also aids with cost per part: to keep all its MJF machines running, Uptive orders and stocks powder in bulk, which brings down the cost per batch and per part.

A primary category of customer for the 17 Markforged 3D printers in this room are other Markforged owners; Uptive acts as scale or overflow production capacity for parts these customers might develop internally. 

Three Stratasys machines are located in a room adjacent to the Markforged capacity.  

MJF is supplemented by fused filament fabrication (FFF) in two forms, desktop and freestanding. Uptive operates 17 Markforged printers, used for applications that require fiber reinforcement or materials that are ESD-safe, V-0 rated or offer other desirable properties.

“A lot of our Markforged customers are actually Markforged owners,” Teuber says. “They use us to scale what they develop.”   

In an adjacent room, the company has three Stratasys Fortus machines. These machines enable Uptive to offer different material options and larger parts; the F900 system provides a build space measuring 36 × 24 × 36 inches. 

Engineered Consistency

While Uptive is well-equipped to handle production work, there is more to its readiness than hardware. The company has invested in people, workflows and process controls that make it possible to reliably manufacture 3D printed polymer parts, whether they are first prototypes or repeat production orders.

“We’ve worked to compress the variables in the equation down to as few as possible,” Teuber says, “so it’s not just a random event every time we make a part.”

A dedicated staff of 20 people work at the Illinois facility to support additive production. Employees typically come to Uptive with CAD skills and an existing understanding of additive, but learn the company’s specific processes on the job. Daily morning meetings help sales and operational employees stay in communication and manage priorities day-to-day.

Fume extractors (the hoses attached to the machines) move printer fumes safely out of the build volume without contaminating the air in the surrounding room. Meanwhile, the air diverters along the ceiling allow for air conditioning or heating the room without creating hot or cool spots. 

Other controls are engineered into the building itself. Some of these controls are listed below, specific to the MJF room:

• Temperature control. The printing room environment is held within a tight range between 70-74°F to keep materials and machines at peak performance.
• Humidity control. Illinois is dry in the winter, but humid in the summer, so Uptive uses a combination of humidifiers and dehumidifiers to control moisture in the material as the season dictates “so that parts in January are the same as parts in July,” Teuber says. Ideal working humidity for this process is between 30 and 70%.
• Air diverters. Heat and cooling is delivered to the production floor through diverters rather than standard vents, which would create hot or cool spots. The diverters spread the airflow across the length of the room for a gentler and more consistent distribution.
• Fume extraction. Overhead exhaust ducts attached to each machine are important for quality as well as safety. Good extraction prevents worker contact with potentially hazardous fumes, and also protects the hard-won air temperature and humidity conditions.  
• Positive pressure. More air is pushed into the MJF space than it can pull in from other parts of the building, creating a positive pressure environment that prevents contamination and, again, helps to maintain the optimal air conditions.

A representative from MasterGraphics runs a routine calibration test on one of Uptive’s MJF 3D printers. Regular maintenance and steps like this help the company ensure consistency across its fleet. 

Consistency comes from process as well. The MJF machines undergo a frequent calibration process every 1-2 months, including the building of calibration cubes that Uptive designed itself. The entire build volume is filled with these cubes during a calibration build, which are then 3D scanned to look for defects that could indicate hot spots in the printer or other areas for adjustment.

Uptive developed this calibration cube internally. It runs periodic calibration builds in which the entire build volume of an MJF printer is filled with these cubes; post-printing, they can be scanned and evaluated to assess print performance throughout the envelope. 

The Additive Strategy

All of this — the equipment, the care, the workflow — adds cost to additive manufacturing. 

“Quality costs. Expertise costs. Environmental controls cost. We’re not going to be the cheapest,” Teuber says.

But this is ok, because Uptive Manufacturing is after customers who can understand additive as a strategic enterprise solution. Its ideal additive clients are those who don’t balk at the higher price per part for an MJF component compared to injection molding, because they know how much they’re saving on the tool. They are the inventors not yet ready to make that investment, and the OEMs that see additive as a cash-flow solution thanks to just-in-time delivery.

“We’re looking for companies willing to take that journey with us,” Teuber says. Its customers thus far have included organizations such as NASA, 3M and Intel. But perhaps some of the most exciting work the company has done has been with much smaller businesses.

“We have helped people launch a product or business because AM was the only way they could.”

One example, Central Sound, is a startup that grew from the founder’s desire to replace a broken component on his headphones. When he discovered that the OEM didn’t supply replacement parts, he developed his own. Today, the founder and his wife work full-time for this business supplying premium parts for audio equipment, with Uptive Manufacturing producing the products.

Parts made for Central Sound, as-printed (grey) and after dyeing (black). 

“This is how manufacturing becomes democratized,” Teuber says, counter to the conventional wisdom that democratization will mean more individuals owning and operating their own equipment.

“We provide access to industrial-level equipment that would be unaffordable otherwise,” he explains. “Small businesses can afford quality parts through our services. We have helped people launch a product or business because AM was the only way they could.”

Uptive Manufacturing is on a growth trajectory; Teuber and his team now feel they have hit their stride with additive production, and are ready for even higher scale. But this will come with the same care and custom approach that has become the company’s hallmark. In addition to good business practice, Teuber sees this as necessary to advance AM broadly, and potentially overcome negative past experiences.

“We have to be proactive, not reactive, about educating customers and ensuring they have success with this process,” he says. It’s a responsibility that he believes extends beyond Uptive, to any additive service provider. “We all need to be good stewards and good advocates for additive.”