Skip to content
NS/ Sulakvelidze
enka

G3D fused-filament 3D printers

A Georgian manufacturer of fused-filament 3D printers: three production platforms, from a 220 mm desktop machine to a one-metre industrial cell, designed, built and sold out of Tbilisi.

Role
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer
Organisation
G3D
Period
2022 – present
Stage
Production
Product photograph of the G3D Starter, a desktop fused-filament 3D printer.

PL.01

The G3D Starter — a desktop fused-filament printer, built in Tbilisi.

G3D is the company I co-founded in June 2022 as CTO. The line runs three platforms today: Starter at 220 × 220 × 300 mm, Advanced at 350 × 350 × 350 mm, and an Industrial cell with a 1000 × 1000 × 1000 mm build volume, extrusion to about 500 °C, Klipper-based control and remote monitoring. More than fifty machines have been manufactured to date. I own the technical stack: mechanical architecture, electronics, firmware, the control and monitoring software, and the additive-manufacturing process that produces parts for our own machines and for the parts customers print on them.

The problem

A desktop FDM printer is a commodity; a machine a workshop can rely on is not. Most of the market buys imported machines whose firmware, kinematics and failure modes belong to a vendor an ocean away — and a machine you cannot repair, re-tune or extend on the day it misbehaves is a machine a production schedule cannot depend on. G3D set out to build that machine locally: kinematics, electronics and firmware chosen together, so that a defect found on the shop floor can be fixed in the design that produces the next machine.

What was built

  1. 01

    Three platforms on one engineering base, sized by the part rather than by the market segment: 220 × 220 × 300 mm for the bench, 350 × 350 × 350 mm for the workshop, and a 1000 × 1000 × 1000 mm industrial cell with extrusion to about 500 °C.

  2. 02

    Klipper-based control on the industrial platform, with remote monitoring, so a machine reports its own state instead of waiting for an operator to notice that it has stopped.

  3. 03

    Additive manufacturing used as production and not only as prototyping: blades, structural parts and machine components printed in-house, including on the DAWTONE turbine programme.

  4. 04

    A ten-person core engineering and operations team, supported by a distributed network of up to thirty specialists across several countries.

What it produced

Numbers I can stand behind. A number I cannot stand behind is not on this page.

Three platforms live on the company’s storefront, more than fifty machines manufactured, and a consumables line — recycled-PET filament, bed adhesives and cleaners — developed from formulation to retail alongside the machines. A GEL 150,000 GITA pilot-regions grant was awarded to the venture in 2022.

50+

Machines manufactured to date

Europass CV.pdf — G3D role record; research/03-fact-verification-report.md §4

3

Production platforms live on the storefront

g3dprinting.com/en/printers; research/03-fact-verification-report.md §4

10

Core engineering and operations team

Europass CV.pdf — G3D role record

30

Specialists in the distributed network, across multiple countries

Europass CV.pdf — G3D role record (“up to 30 specialists across multiple countries”)

In pictures

Second product view of the G3D Starter desktop fused-filament 3D printer.

PL.02

The G3D Starter — a desktop fused-filament printer, built in Tbilisi.

Product view of the G3D Advanced, a mid-format fused-filament 3D printer, supplied at very high resolution.

PL.03

G3D Advanced printer product view.

Second product view of the G3D Advanced mid-format fused-filament 3D printer.

PL.04

Industrial-format G3D printing system.

Funding

  • 2022 · Georgian Technology & Innovation Agency (GITA)

    G3D

    150,000 GEL

The other case studies