Callaway Golf is moving titanium additive manufacturing out of its R&D lab and onto a factory floor. The company plans to spend $15 million on a dedicated titanium 3D printing facility in Fort Worth, Texas. It expects the plant to be operational in mid-2027 and to supply part of its U.S. product needs by 2028, starting with custom titanium products. The announcement came the same day as the company's third-quarter 2026 results. In that release, CEO Chip Brewer said Callaway is "investing to support long-term growth, including our new 3D printing capabilities."
The dollar figure is modest. What makes the news worth attention is the direction. Callaway is a company with more than $2 billion in annual revenue, and it is betting that powder-bed metal printing can produce sellable club components in volume, in the United States, in a product category whose premium drivers are cast overseas.
From Prototype Bench to Production Line
Callaway is not new to metal AM. According to AmateurGolf.com, the company has researched additive manufacturing for about seven years and has printed titanium prototypes and custom models in-house since late 2022. VoxelMatters traces the work back further, to a 2018 partnership with Titomic and a consultancy agreement with GE Additive, now Colibrium Additive. That earlier work produced a redesigned Odyssey R-Ball Prototype putter head.
Until now, though, titanium AM at Callaway has been limited largely to prototypes and custom models. Those are low-volume, high-touch jobs where a printer's per-part cost matters less than how quickly it can turn a design around. The Fort Worth plant changes that. VoxelMatters says it will expand the company's titanium AM capabilities and let Callaway move into production, and AmateurGolf reports it will sit next to Callaway's North America Distribution Center. Building it there puts printed parts close to the logistics hub that ships finished goods, which would suit a made-to-order business.
Brewer did not undersell the ambition. VoxelMatters quotes him saying 3D printing represents "one of the most significant opportunities to advance golf club performance in decades."
Why Titanium, and Why Here?
The more interesting details came from the earnings call, as reported by AmateurGolf.com. Management noted that essentially all premium drivers use titanium heads made by centrifugal casting overseas, and that no scaled U.S. vendor has made titanium clubs in years. To its knowledge, Callaway said, there is no scaled capacity for 3D printing titanium clubs to its specifications anywhere outside China. AmateurGolf adds that Fort Worth parts will carry a U.S. country of origin.
That second claim explains the strategy. If no contract manufacturer can print titanium club parts at volume to Callaway's specifications, a company that wants the capability has to build it. Callaway did not frame the move around tariffs or supply-chain politics in the material we reviewed, so it would be speculation to call that the motive. The structural point holds regardless: if the plant ramps as planned, it would give Callaway a U.S.-made titanium club component that is printed rather than cast.
Casting has well-known limits for this kind of part. AmateurGolf notes that casting limits how thin and intricate internal walls can be, and that every internal rib or pocket has to be something a mold can produce. Additive manufacturing drops much of that constraint. VoxelMatters says it allows complex internal geometries and lets designers tune a club head's weight and performance through internal adjustments. In a driver or iron, where moving a few grams changes launch and forgiveness, that design freedom is the selling point.
Already on Tour, Coming to Retail in 2027
Callaway also said unannounced 3D-printed parts have already been used on professional tours. The company's 2027 product line will include products that use 3D printing, before Fort Worth reaches production in 2028. In other words, printed components will reach retail before the new plant produces them in volume. The first commercial parts will presumably come from existing in-house capacity or outside sources, though the sources we reviewed do not say which.
Callaway is not the only company working on this. VoxelMatters points to Cobra Golf's 3D-printed irons, whose printed lattice offers a 33 percent weight reduction. It also notes that Bryson DeChambeau brought a custom 3D-printed 5-iron to the 2026 Masters. Printed clubs have moved past novelty, at least at the top of the market. Callaway is trying to be the company that makes them at scale.
Keeping the Numbers in Perspective
It would be easy to overstate this, and AmateurGolf.com itself notes that $15 million is modest for a company of Callaway's size. The Q3 release shows the scale. Callaway raised its full-year 2026 net sales outlook to $2.065–$2.078 billion, guided Adjusted EBITDA to $272–$280 million, and has repurchased $135 million of its own shares so far this year. By that last measure, the company has spent nine times more on buybacks than on the printing plant.
That ratio says something about risk appetite. AmateurGolf notes that the facility will support only "a portion" of U.S. product needs in 2028. The stated target is narrower than replacing overseas casting for Callaway's driver output: part of U.S. product needs, starting with custom titanium products. That reads as a bounded first step, though the company has not described it as a pilot.
What It Means for Makers
For most readers, the takeaway is not that you'll print your own driver head. Titanium powder-bed fusion remains an industrial process with industrial costs, safety requirements and post-processing. Several points still apply to anyone who designs for additive:
- Customization is the business case. Callaway is starting with custom titanium products, not mass-market heads. That matches where AM economics usually work: low volumes, high variation and a customer willing to pay for fit. Makers selling printed parts should note that a $2 billion company started in the same place.
- Lattices are becoming normal. Cobra's 33 percent weight reduction came from a printed lattice optimized for a lower center of gravity and higher moment of inertia. Mass-redistribution design is spreading from hobby experiments into products sold at retail.
- Domestic AM capacity creates opportunity. Callaway says no scaled capacity for printing titanium clubs to its specifications exists outside China, to its knowledge. When a gap like that closes, supplier ecosystems tend to follow: post-processing, finishing, metrology and design services.
- The timeline is realistic. Seven years of research, about four years of in-house titanium printing, and production still roughly two years away. Moving from a working prototype to a repeatable production part takes years, even for a company with Callaway's resources.
Bottom Line
Callaway's Fort Worth plant is a measured bet, not a revolution. It commits real money and a real building to the idea that printed titanium belongs in production golf clubs, with tour use as validation and custom products as the first market. If the economics work by 2028, the more important result may be the first proof of scaled U.S. titanium AM in consumer sporting goods, more than any individual club.
