Manufacturing belongs back in your hands.
Print3d Hive is building the infrastructure that turns individual makers and their machines into a coordinated, local-first production network.
Big factories took the work, and the money, out of our local communities.
We used to make almost everything close to home. Woodworking. Clothes. Toys. Furniture. Tools. Hardware. Repair parts. A town had shops, benches, and people who knew how to build. Then that work got locked inside factories most of us will never walk into. The skills left with it. When a ship is late or a plant shuts down, the community waits.
- Work and pay leave town the moment production does
- Supply chains stretch across oceans and snap under pressure
- Designs and know-how sit inside a few companies
- Everyday people cannot get at the tools that used to live next door
- A community that cannot make things has to buy whatever it is given
The tide has already turned.
Those tools are back in our neighborhoods. Printers, CNC benches, sewing machines, lasers, welders, kilns. Garages and small shops can make real goods again. Nobody has been connecting them. Until now.
The machines were already here. We just were not using them together.
I picked up 3D printing in 2020 because I was bored during COVID. What started as a way to pass the time turned into a real craft, then a business idea. I am a U.S. Army veteran. In the Army I led data analysis teams, and that work stuck. I still care about data, and I still care about making things. Print3d Hive came from watching how fragile our supply chains are, and how much we lean on other countries to send us the goods we used to make ourselves.
The printers, shops, and skills are already in our towns. What we did not have was a way to put them to work as one network. That is the job.
A complete, working system. Not a promise.
Short version: pick a design, order it, a nearby maker makes it, you pick it up or get it shipped.
Browse the catalog
Find designs for the things you need. High-quality, production-ready files.
Download, fork, or order
Take the files freely. Remix them. Or place an order directly.
We match you with a nearby maker
Print3d Hive matches the order to the nearest capable maker in the network.
Maker produces it
Your chosen maker produces the part with their preferred materials and settings.
You choose delivery
Free local pickup, drop-off for a fee, or shipping. You stay in control.
Value stays with the people doing the work.
We built the incentives the way they should have been from the start.
- The listing price is the price of the thing
- Card fees come out of Hive's cut, not an extra line on the buyer
- Makers and creators keep the bulk
- Shipping and tax are separate
Checkout shows the current numbers.
Slixe.
An all-in-one maker and engineering application — design, simulate, slice, and run production in one place.
Press a topic to learn more. Today ships the Studio + slicer core; the same app grows into CAD, physics, computational design, print farms, manufacturing methods, and more.
What Slixe is
One application for makers and engineers — not a pile of disconnected tools. Hive connects local production; Slixe is where you design and make the work.
- Studio today: open a model, slice it, preview layers, send the job
- Runs on your computer and in the browser
- Built from first principles — aims for strong, reliable parts
- Grows into design, sim, and manufacture without switching apps
CAD & parametric design
Exact dimensions and rules that keep a design editable — like industrial CAD, in the same place you later slice and simulate.
- Build models with knobs you can change later
- Set sizes and rules so edits stay consistent
- Go from rough idea to print-ready part in one app
3D creation tools
Sculpt, paint surfaces, and explore shapes quickly — creative 3D tools, still connected to engineering and print prep.
- Push and pull form at a creative, hands-on pace
- Try colors and materials while the design is live
- Keep the same object for CAD, physics, or slicing next
Computational engineering — Leap 71–class power, human UI
Powerful generative design (the kind Leap 71 is known for) with a normal app UI — so you finish real parts, not only code notebooks.
- Let algorithms help shape parts without writing code all day
- Set goals and limits (strength, size, weight) as simple controls
- Get solid geometry you can simulate, slice, and print next
Physics modeling
Real-world checks — not just a pretty 3D view. See how heat, force, and the print process behave before you waste material.
- Use heat and strength feedback to choose better print paths
- Test if a part will hold up before you spend filament or resin
- Tweak the shape and re-check physics in the same session
Slicer — FDM and resin
Turn a 3D model into machine instructions for filament printers and resin vats, tuned for quality and the job at hand.
- Filament (FDM): layers, walls, fill, supports, printer-ready files
- Resin: exposure, supports, and prep for vat-style printers
- See time, material, and cost before you hit print
Machine Farm
Run several printers without a spreadsheet. Watch queues and status next to the slice, and link into Hive when neighbors make the part.
- Add printers on your home or shop network by IP address
- See job queues, progress, and live camera views in one place
- Manage a growing fleet as you move past a single machine
Creating manufacturing methods
Designing the part is only half the job. Slixe aims to let you invent and plan how it gets made locally — the full production recipe — so small shops can scale quality the way factories do, without a factory.
- Map every step from raw stock to finished part on a clear visual board
- Chain print, post-process, inspect, and pack into one repeatable workflow
- Time, cost, and scrap estimates so rapid local runs stay realistic
- Compare routes — e.g. print vs mill vs hybrid — before you commit the shop
- AI that suggests leaner sequences, fewer fixtures, and smarter batch sizes
- Save a method as a reusable recipe the farm and Hive can run again
- Jigs, workholding, and station layout as first-class steps — not afterthoughts
- Hand a finished method to local makers so quality scales beyond one person
Future vision — the maker OS
Not only 3D printing. Over time, one app for how things get designed and made — many kinds of making — still local-first on the Hive.
- CNC: cut and mill parts with prepared toolpaths
- Sewing: patterns and production steps for soft goods
- Electronics: circuit layouts and nearby board workflows
- Manufacturing methods that span print, CNC, and hand stations as one plan
- More ways to make things later — same app, same local network
- Design, prove, produce, and deliver without endless file exports
North star: one maker/engineering app — from first sketch to farm and local fulfillment.
This is the early operating system for distributed manufacturing.
You are not a consumer. You are a participant in the rebuild.
Every order you place, every design you fork, every machine you run strengthens a real, physical alternative to the extractive model we inherited.
Resilience
When the next disruption hits, communities with active local production capacity will not wait for containers from across the ocean.
Agency
You decide what gets made, how it gets made, and who makes it. The tools and the network are finally in the same place.
Legacy
We are in the first generation that can actually build the open, distributed manufacturing base the next century will run on. That work is happening now.
The infrastructure is being built. The question is whether you will help build it.
Join the network as a maker, or support the makers already in it by ordering today.