Shadow defense industry: How thousands of Ukrainians with 3D printers established a large-scale weapons factory.
Military personnel consistently require products that can be manufactured using inexpensive 3D printers: munitions for drone drops, mines, medical equipment, spare parts for rifles, radios, and drones. It is the 3D printer that transforms a grenade into a "drop," and an ordinary quadcopter into a bomber.
Since 2014, volunteers in Ukraine have been producing such items at home for acquaintances in the military. However, the scattered groups of printers are no longer sufficient. The army's needs require millions of printed parts and munitions, which must be produced with high quality and delivered promptly to the front lines.
One group of volunteers had an idea: why not have everyone with printers work as a single defense factory: quickly setting up a production line for the most essential items, standardizing products, developing their own solutions, and training new printers?
This is how "PrintArmy" began its operations. Over the past two years, the organization has united and trained thousands of printers, established a design bureau, implemented quality control, created feedback channels with the military, organized logistics, and founded a single platform for coordinating its volunteers' work.
Currently, the "PrintArmy" fleet comprises over 10,000 3D printers spread across Ukraine and abroad. Every week, hundreds of batches are shipped to the front lines. The procurement of materials is financed by printers, partner companies, and caring Ukrainians.
The founders of the organization compete with resellers and some manufacturers who sell the same products to the military at a significant markup. The volunteers aim to push them out of the market by providing everything for free or at the cost of components.
Everyone Will Print
"During World War II, women and children operated machines and produced munitions. We are not in a better situation now, so a 3D printer could be in every Ukrainian home," begins the conversation with the EP by the head of "PrintArmy," Mykyta Kuvikov, better known by the pseudonym Yevhen Volnov.
Volnov is a well-known Ukrainian prankster. He gained another wave of popularity as Major Chornobayev, calling the relatives of Russian soldiers at the beginning of the large-scale war. He purchased his first 3D printer during the pandemic and started printing protective face shields for medical staff.
3 Since February 2022, Volnov, along with a small group of enthusiasts, began taking orders from the military and called on his followers to join the printing efforts. Surprisingly, many people responded.
"When the two-hundredth person responded, I became exhausted from manually training each one, explaining how the printer works and where to send the products. When I do something the same more than twice, it needs to be automated.
Optimizing business processes and developing my own brand is what I constantly engage in. So, life itself prepared me for creating 'PrintArmy.' We established a single platform for military personnel and printers to find and verify each other, much like an online store," says Volnov.
The team of printers grew rapidly, particularly due to "PrintArmy's" openness to newcomers. Volunteers prepared dozens of lectures and guides on how to master the use of 3D printers, from purchasing the right model to selecting the type of plastic.
The community consists of around 3,000 active printers ready to take on new orders. More than 15,000 military personnel are registered on the platform, each of whom can freely select the necessary product for their unit from the catalog.
The "PrintArmy" catalog contains approximately 500 different products, most of which are original designs. A dedicated unit of volunteer engineers with 3D modeling skills handles R&D. Development typically begins with a request from the military. They also test the prototype on the battlefield and provide feedback.
4 If the development is of high quality, it is added to the general catalog. From that point on, the technology becomes available to any military personnel and can be scaled across the entire army. A printer only needs to wait for an order, download the ready template for the 3D printer, and start printing.
The excitement among those eager to print caused a bit of chaos, so the leadership of "PrintArmy" gathered the most experienced printers and appointed them as managers or "curators." Each of the two hundred managers not only produces but also oversees the supply of several types of products from others. A curator's apartment serves as a production workshop, warehouse, and quality control lab.
The curator sends products to the front via "Nova Poshta." According to one of the leaders, the volunteer limits of this operator are already insufficient for the volumes of "PrintArmy," so a significant portion is sent at their own expense.
Above the curators are "uber-curators" who oversee strategic areas: drones, medicine, models. Meanwhile, none of the thousands of "PrintArmy" workers receive a salary and spend their own money and time on the work.
Over the past two years, the community has shipped over 275 tons of products. Among them are 3.3 million parts for "drops," 2.9 million shells, hundreds of thousands of parts for drones and infantry weapons, models, adapters for devices, products for sapper units, and medical equipment.
5 The organization's funding is almost entirely decentralized: each printer purchases as much special plastic as they can afford. Ukrainian manufacturers of this material provide "PrintArmy" volunteers with discounts.
Some private companies, such as "OTP Bank," allocate funds for purchasing plastic, which is distributed among experienced printers for fulfilling large orders. Fundraising events are also held to procure materials, during which trophies from the front or 3D printers are raffled off.
Currently, "PrintArmy" is stockpiling products in warehouses in preparation for widespread power outages. During the winter production slowdown, the most popular products will be distributed from pre-prepared reserves.
The organization is gradually moving beyond printing and is uniting volunteers skilled in weaving nets, soldering electronics, and working with more complex tools.
For instance, volunteers Zhanna and Denys from the creative studio ZhaDenKa produced and freely distributed around 60,000 protective face shields that help preserve the vision of soldiers when injured using laser cutting. The "PrintArmy" platform is also collecting "Sugar" and TinySA drone detectors.
"Communists" Against "Resellers"
In Ukraine, there are companies that sell plastic products at exorbitant prices, Volnov says. In the community, they are referred to as "resellers." "One of our public goals is to dismantle the 'reseller' market. For this, they call us communists," noted the volunteer.
For example, the cost of an eye protection shield from "PrintArmy" is 3 UAH, while similar products are sold on the market for 90-100 UAH. The cost of a mine model among community printers is 40 UAH, while the market price is 1,400 UAH. Drone detectors "Sugar" cost up to 5,000 UAH on the market, while "PrintArmy" assembles them at cost for 1,900 UAH.
6 Relations between the printer community and sellers of similar products are tense. Some Ukrainian manufacturers steal publicly available "PrintArmy" technologies, scale