Under $10,000 Metal 3D Printing Is Here: The Scrap Labs SCRAP 1

The price floor for laser powder bed fusion metal 3D printing just dropped below $10,000. Scrap Labs, a Boulder, Colorado startup founded by a former SpaceX manufacturing engineer, is offering the SCRAP 1 — a full LPBF metal printer — as a kit for $9,600 at its early-bird launch price. The regular kit price is $14,990. A Dutch startup called Metal-Base is simultaneously bringing a competing sub-€10,000 metal LPBF system to market via Kickstarter.

The entry-level metal AM market has been stuck above $50,000 for most of its existence. That barrier is now being crossed from two directions at once.

Context

Metal additive manufacturing has two pricing tiers: industrial systems from EOS, Trumpf, SLM Solutions, and similar vendors that start around $250,000 and scale into the millions, and a middle market of “accessible” industrial systems from companies like Desktop Metal and Markforged that brought prices down to $50,000–$150,000. Below that, there has been almost nothing — the physics and engineering required for reliable LPBF printing with metal powder made sub-$20,000 systems implausible until recently.

The AM market hit $16 billion in 2025 with metal AM at $6.27 billion of that total. The growth thesis for metal AM — aerospace, defense, medical — depends on making the technology accessible to smaller operators, research labs, and educational institutions that cannot justify six-figure capital expenditures. A sub-$10,000 entry point is a structural market change.

The Detail

The SCRAP 1 from Scrap Labs is a benchtop system with a 100×100×100mm build volume. It runs a 200W laser with 135-micron spot size and achieves 30-micron layer thickness — specifications that, while not matching the resolution or build volume of industrial systems, are sufficient for real parts in research and low-volume production contexts. The company claims 99% part density, which is the standard threshold for structural metal components. The architecture is modular and open: tool-less build platform removal, rapid material changes, and a design that allows users to modify and evolve the hardware.

The founder, Matt Woods, brings relevant credibility. Ten-plus years of metal AM experience including printing production rocket engine components at SpaceX represents hands-on knowledge of what LPBF systems need to deliver under demanding conditions. The SCRAP 1’s design reflects that background — it is not a scaled-down industrial system, but a ground-up design for accessibility, maintainability, and community development. Software runs browser-based and is compatible with ScrapSlicer, PrusaSlicer, and OrcaSlicer, connecting the system to the existing FDM toolchain ecosystem.

Metal-Base’s Metal 1.0 approaches the same problem from Europe. Their Kickstarter Super Early Bird pricing started around €8,500, positioning it as a direct competitor to the SCRAP 1 in the same price bracket. Two independent efforts reaching the sub-$10,000 threshold simultaneously — from different continents with different approaches — suggests the underlying engineering is now achievable rather than aspirational.

The limitation both systems share is build volume. 100×100×100mm covers a large portion of research applications and small production parts, but it excludes the structural and aerospace components that define metal AM’s most commercially valuable use cases. These systems are entry points to the technology — for learning, prototyping, small-batch production, and education — not replacements for industrial-scale production systems. The material science advances happening in parallel with these hardware developments will eventually reach systems like the SCRAP 1 as the ecosystem matures.

Source: VoxelMatters

Content created with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy.