The most tedious part of 3D printing isn't the wait. It's the cleanup. For anyone who has ever spent more time picking away brittle support structures than they did designing a part, the promise of a printer that simply doesn't need them is quietly compelling. MAV Unlimited, a Portland-based hardware startup, is building that printer. Their bet is volumetric additive manufacturing, a process that cures an entire photosensitive resin part in three minutes by projecting light into a vat, rather than tracing it layer by agonizing layer [MAV Unlimited, retrieved 2026].
A bet on light, not layers
Volumetric additive manufacturing, or VAM, is not a new lab curiosity. The underlying tomographic technique has been published in journals like Science and Nature Communications for years, lauded for its speed and ability to produce parts with exceptionally smooth surfaces [Science, retrieved 2026] [Nature Communications, retrieved 2026]. MAV Unlimited's commercial bet is scaling it up to what they call "the largest and fastest volumetric additive manufacturing machine in the world" and selling it to industrial customers [Cornell Center for Technology Licensing, retrieved 2026]. The advantages, on paper, are a manufacturing engineer's wish list.
- Radical speed. A complex part that might take hours in a traditional vat photopolymerization printer is done in minutes.
- No supports. Because the part cures all at once within the resin volume, there are no overhangs to support and subsequently remove [Science, retrieved 2026].
- Embedded components. The process allows you to suspend a sensor, magnet, or circuit board in the resin vat and print the housing directly around it, creating a sealed, multi-material assembly in one step [MAV Unlimited, retrieved 2026].
The target is clear: high-value, low-volume production runs where design complexity and lead time matter more than raw material cost. Think aerospace brackets, custom medical devices, or specialized tooling.
The team pulling from MIT and Cornell
The company is a deep-tech consortium by design. It was co-founded by Professor Robert Shepherd of Cornell, known for his work in soft robotics, Professor T.J. Wallin from MIT, and Aaron Pempel, who serves as CEO [MAV Unlimited, retrieved 2026]. The academic pedigree is underscored by MAV Unlimited's residency at The Engine, MIT's incubator for tough tech startups [The Engine, retrieved 2026]. The team also includes a principal materials scientist, Darshil Shah, and Justin Kan, listed as an innovator behind the printer [LinkedIn, retrieved 2026]. This isn't a garage operation; it's a hardware startup built on licensed IP, with a table that looks like this:
| Role | Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|---|
| CEO & Co-Founder | Aaron Pempel | Harvard Business School background |
| Co-Founder | Robert Shepherd | Professor, Cornell University |
| Co-Founder | T.J. Wallin | Professor, MIT |
| Co-Founder | Nicholas Caputo | Connected to Cornell IP |
| Principal Materials Scientist | Darshil Shah, PhD | MAV Unlimited |
Where the wheels could come off
For all its elegance, VAM has well-documented constraints. The most significant is material limitation. The technology currently works only with photosensitive resins [ScienceDirect, retrieved 2026]. The universe of engineering-grade thermoplastics, metals, and ceramics that dominate industrial 3D printing is, for now, out of reach. MAV Unlimited's wedge depends on expanding that material library or convincing manufacturers that resin-based parts are sufficient for their end-use applications.
Competition is also crystallizing. Manifest Technologies (formerly Vitro3D) is pursuing a similar volumetric approach. The broader competitive set includes every incumbent selling large-format stereolithography (SLA) or digital light processing (DLP) printers, companies that have spent decades building relationships with materials suppliers and service bureaus. MAV Unlimited's answer appears to be pure throughput. If their machine is truly the largest and fastest, the unit economics of printing resin parts could shift decisively in their favor, making the material trade-off worthwhile for specific jobs.
The next twelve months
The company is in a classic deep-tech stealth phase. Founded in 2024, it has filed a Form D for a securities offering but has not publicly disclosed funding amounts or lead investors beyond its affiliation with The Engine [Craft.co, retrieved 2026]. The next milestones are straightforward but hard: ship first machines to pilot customers, publish case studies with real throughput and cost data, and announce a seed round sizable enough to fund the inventory and engineering required for industrial hardware.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation highlights the throughput bet. Assume a traditional SLA printer takes 8 hours to produce a complex part, with 2 hours of operator time for support removal and post-processing. MAV Unlimited claims a 3-minute print with zero support removal. If their machine costs 3x more upfront, it still pays for itself after a few hundred parts just on labor savings, not counting the value of faster iteration. Their real competition isn't another startup. It's the inertia of a factory floor manager who has a reliable, if slow, SLA machine from 3D Systems or Formlabs already humming in the corner. To win, MAV Unlimited doesn't need to be better in every dimension. They just need to be fast enough, and clean enough, to make the accountant look up from the spreadsheet.
Sources
- [MAV Unlimited, retrieved 2026] MAV Unlimited, The future of manufacturing is volumetric. | https://mav-unlimited.com/
- [Science, retrieved 2026] Volumetric additive manufacturing via tomographic reconstruction | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau7114
- [Nature Communications, retrieved 2026] Tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20180-6
- [Cornell Center for Technology Licensing, retrieved 2026] MAV Unlimited - Center For Technology Licensing | https://ctl.cornell.edu/about/startups/mav-unlimited/
- [The Engine, retrieved 2026] MAV Unlimited | The Engine | https://engine.xyz/resident-companies/mav-unlimited
- [LinkedIn, retrieved 2026] Darshil Shah, PhD - MAV Unlimited, Inc. | https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshilshah000/
- [Craft.co, retrieved 2026] MAV Unlimited Company Profile | https://craft.co/mav-unlimited
- [ScienceDirect, retrieved 2026] Limitations of volumetric additive manufacturing | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221486042300123X