Charles R. Goulding and Preeti Sulibhavi see a familiar Gold Rush story unfolding in American manufacturing, where the biggest opportunities for 3D printing may come from supplying the tools that enable the next industrial expansion.
Stanley Black & Decker’s announcement of a US$1 billion investment in U.S. operations is much bigger than a conventional factory-expansion story. For the additive manufacturing industry, it could signal something even more important: a major industrial customer is preparing to spend heavily on research, advanced production and the skilled workforce needed to operate it.
On August 12, Stanley Black & Decker announced that it plans to invest US$1 billion in the United States through 2028. Approximately half will go toward research and development, while the other half will support capital expenditures, its U.S. manufacturing footprint and new product development. The company is also committing US$60 million through 2030 to its DEWALT Grow the Trades initiative, with US$27 million already deployed.
That combination creates at least three significant opportunities for the 3D printing industry.
1. More R&D means more opportunities for additive manufacturing
The first opportunity is perhaps the most obvious: US$500 million in planned R&D spending creates room for new manufacturing technologies, including additive manufacturing.
Stanley Black & Decker is hardly a newcomer to 3D printing. The company has previously used additive manufacturing for both prototyping and production. Its own career materials describe the deployment of robotics, digital manufacturing and 3D printing across North American manufacturing plants.
The company has also been an important industrial customer for metal additive manufacturing. In 2022, Desktop Metal shipped the first Production System P-50 to Stanley Black & Decker. The system was designed for high-throughput production of metal parts, illustrating the company’s interest in moving beyond 3D printing as merely a prototyping technology.
Earlier work with Markforged (now Stratasys) provides another useful example. Stanley Black & Decker engineers used Metal X to produce complex, low-volume parts, including an actuator housing and wheel shaft. One reported application reduced manufacturing costs by 34% to 48% and cut lead time by 69%.
The significance of the new investment is that these experiments can potentially become part of a much broader industrial strategy.
For the additive manufacturing sector, that means opportunities for printer manufacturers, materials suppliers, software developers, inspection companies and service bureaus. R&D programs can generate demand for rapid prototyping, tooling, fixtures, jigs and eventually production components.
It also fits the larger trend toward digitally controlled domestic manufacturing. As we recently noted in our coverage of the new White House defense policy and additive manufacturing, federal policy is increasingly emphasizing domestic production, supply-chain visibility and faster qualification of U.S. suppliers.
Stanley Black & Decker’s investment puts those same principles into practice at a major private manufacturer.
2. A larger U.S. manufacturing footprint needs advanced production tools
The second opportunity comes from the US$500 million earmarked for capital expenditures and long-term investments in U.S. manufacturing.
Building or modernizing factories creates demand for the equipment inside those factories. That includes conventional machinery, automation and robotics, but additive manufacturing can become part of the production infrastructure as well.
Consider the many manufacturing applications surrounding a company like Stanley Black & Decker. New product development requires prototypes and design iterations. Production lines need custom fixtures and tooling. Plants require replacement components and maintenance parts. Low-volume or highly customized components can be uneconomical to produce using conventional tooling.
These are precisely the situations where additive manufacturing can complement traditional processes.
Stanley Black & Decker’s experience demonstrates the point. Markforged (now Stratasys) has reported that the company was able to consolidate a four-piece assembly into a single 3D printed component, while achieving substantial savings in cost and production time.
The opportunity therefore isn’t limited to selling a 3D printer. It extends to the entire additive manufacturing ecosystem surrounding a modern factory: CAD and simulation software, materials, post-processing, quality assurance, metrology, digital inventory systems and production-management software.
The company’s manufacturing business already spans tools, storage, engineered fasteners and other industrial products, while its manufacturing-solutions operation serves industrial, aerospace and defense customers. That breadth gives additive manufacturing companies multiple potential entry points.
There is also an important construction angle. Stanley Black & Decker is heavily involved in tools and technology for the construction industry, while federal agencies are increasingly considering 3D printing for infrastructure and military construction. Our recent report on the federal additive manufacturing construction transition examined how 3D printed concrete, local earth materials and robotic construction are moving from experiments toward deployment.
As U.S. infrastructure spending expands, the companies supplying the equipment, materials and digital systems behind that construction transformation could become an important part of the broader manufacturing opportunity.
The bottom line is that the huge increase in specific applications robots is going to result in the creation of new and advanced tools that are unlike the previous generations of tools designed for humans. We have covered how Devonics uses industrial automation on Fabbaloo earlier this summer. Additionally, we have also covered similar developments at Stabilus, the global manufacturer of motion control products and engineered components.
3. The skilled-trades investment could build an additive manufacturing workforce
The third opportunity is people.
Stanley Black & Decker says the construction sector could need nearly half a million additional workers by 2027. Its US$60 million DEWALT Grow the Trades commitment is intended to expand training programs and create new pathways into skilled-trades careers.
That matters to additive manufacturing because the technology doesn’t eliminate the need for skilled workers. It changes the skills required.
Modern AM operations need technicians who understand machines, materials, digital models, process parameters, inspection and post-processing. Engineers must understand both additive design principles and conventional manufacturing. Operators need to work comfortably with increasingly automated production systems.
Military veterans represent one particularly promising source of that talent. In our recent article on Florida SkillBridge and additive manufacturing, we examined how veterans with experience using 3D printing in military environments can bring knowledge of digital inventories, distributed manufacturing and rapid-prototyping workflows into civilian industry.
Stanley Black & Decker’s training investment could help create a similar pipeline on a much larger scale.
There is another piece to the workforce puzzle: advanced education and research. Our recent look at SUNY Albany’s work in nanotechnology, life sciences and 3D printing highlighted how materials science, semiconductor technology and additive manufacturing are increasingly converging.
That convergence is important because the next generation of industrial 3D printing will require people who can cross traditional boundaries between materials science, engineering, software and manufacturing.
The Research and Development (R&D) Tax Credit
We have highlighted how additive manufacturing can be used for both prototyping and production, including high-throughput metal part production and complex, low-volume parts. For IRC §41 purposes, these efforts can support the four-part test when teams face technical uncertainty and run iterative trials (e.g., tuning process parameters, designing for consolidation, and validating performance through inspection/metrology) to develop or improve a product or manufacturing process.
Examples include consolidating a four-piece assembly into a single printed component and achieving reported cost and lead-time reductions – often a sign of meaningful process or design improvement supported by CAD/simulation and test iterations. Because production processes are treated as separate business components, companies should document each printer/process change, tooling/fixture/jig project, and replacement/maintenance part workflow separately.
Potential QREs include qualifying wages, non-depreciable prototype supplies, certain computer-use costs, and 65% of eligible contract research. Practical caveats: routine QA or vendor-spec verification, normal production, depreciable equipment, foreign research, and funded research generally do not qualify.
Below is a table that presents the recent investments Stanley has been making in R&D recently when compared to its human capital.
| Research and Development (R&D) Book Expenses Per Capita | ||||
| Company | Reporting Year | R&D book expense in USD millions | Employees/human capital | R&D book expense divided by employee count in USD per employee |
| Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. | 2025 | 321.4 | 43,500 | 7,389 |
| 2024 | 328.8 | 48,500 | 6,779 | |
| 2023 | 362 | 50,500 | 7,168 | |
| 2022 | 357.4 | 54,200 | 6,594 | |
The shovel opportunity
Taken together, Stanley Black & Decker’s announcement represents more than US$1 billion of corporate spending. It is an indication of where American manufacturing may be heading: more domestic capacity, more R&D, more automation and a larger workforce capable of operating increasingly sophisticated production systems.
For additive manufacturing companies, the opportunity is to become part of that infrastructure. During the Gold Rush, the West was not conquered by all the gold that was found. The expansion west succeeded in large part because companies supplied the eager explorers with the equipment they needed to pursue their fortunes: picks, shovels, mining supplies and other necessities.
Leland Stanford understood this model. He moved to California in 1852 during the Gold Rush and joined his brothers’ mercantile business, eventually building a successful enterprise selling supplies to the mining economy. His Sacramento business sold mining implements and miners’ supplies as the Gold Rush economy expanded.
The rest is history.
Today’s manufacturing transformation may have its own equivalent of the gold rush. The gold is the opportunity created by reshoring, infrastructure investment, defense production and industrial automation.
The picks and shovels are the printers, materials, software, inspection systems, tooling and skilled people that make the transformation possible.
Stanley Black & Decker is putting US$1 billion behind that transformation. For the additive manufacturing industry, the question is not simply how much of that money will be spent on 3D printing.
The more interesting question is how much of the manufacturing economy that money helps create will eventually need 3D printing.
