Giant metal 3D printer to build hypersonic systems in Indiana

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has bought one of the largest metal 3D printers on the market, an AMCM M 8K additive manufacturing system, for its new hypersonic payload facility in Odon, Indiana, where the company prepares the experimental test vehicles it flies for the Pentagon’s MACH-TB hypersonic test program.

Germany’s EOS, whose AMCM unit builds the machine, announced the sale on Oct. 27, 2026, saying the printer will be installed at the Kratos Indiana Payload Integration Facility near Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division, though neither company disclosed the price or when the system will begin producing parts.

The M 8K was developed for space and defense work and can print metal parts inside a build volume of 800 by 800 by 1,200 millimeters (31.5 by 31.5 by 47.2 inches) using eight high-power 1.2-kilowatt lasers, with built-in thermal management, gas flow control, filtration and in-process monitoring meant to keep large, complex components accurate and consistent from one build to the next.

“As we change the paradigm on low-cost, high-cadence hypersonic testing for programs like MACH-TB, this type of capability is critical to achieve the goal,” said Mike Johns, senior vice president of Kratos SRE.

Kratos is the prime contractor for MACH-TB 2.0, the U.S. Department of War’s effort to run frequent, affordable flight tests of hypersonic technologies, under a contract worth up to $1.45 billion awarded in January 2025, and printing large metal parts in-house is meant to help the company build test hardware faster and in greater numbers than traditional machining allows.

The printer will join a site that is still ramping up, after Kratos finished the $50 million, 68,000-square-foot (6,317-square-meter) Indiana Payload Integration Facility ahead of schedule in July 2026, with room to prepare up to six hypersonic payloads at once and plans for more than 100 high-tech jobs in its first phase.

“The M 8K was built for exactly these kinds of applications, large, complex parts where scale, precision, and process reliability all matter,” said Martin Bullemer, managing director of AMCM.