Three medical additive manufacturing companies, each built around a different and difficult material, have moved into shared quarters in Munich. As TCT Magazine reported on October 26, 2026, Spectroplast, Munich Medical Devices (MMD) and FIDENTIS now share production, laboratory and office space in what the partners call an Additive Manufacturing Hub. Their stated aim is simple: lower costs and a shorter road from an idea to an approved medical product. The hub held its official opening earlier in October in front of 80 guests.
On paper, the three companies have little in common beyond the city and the word "additive." Spectroplast prints medical-grade silicone. MMD prints porous, bioactive PEEK implants, both as series parts and as patient-specific devices. FIDENTIS, a spin-off of the Fraunhofer IGCV research institute, prints several metal alloys within a single part, and targets dental prosthetics at scale. That spread looks deliberate. The three work with different materials and applications, so they are unlikely to compete for the same part, yet all three face the same overhead that comes with making things that go into, or onto, the human body.
Three Materials That Resist Easy Printing
Each of the three tenants works with a material most makers will recognize as hard to print well, even outside medicine.
Silicone. Spectroplast describes its business on its company homepage with the line "True Silicone. 3D Printed." It sells silicone additive manufacturing as a service, says it is ISO 9001 certified, and claims more than 120,000 parts shipped. TCT describes its output as soft, skin-friendly parts that until now could only be made by moulding. Anyone who has tried to get flexible, skin-safe parts out of a desktop machine knows why that matters. Printing a soft filament or resin that only approximates silicone is a long way from producing parts in actual silicone. Spectroplast's pitch is that it closes that gap.
PEEK. MMD's material is the high-performance polymer that hobbyists usually meet only as an aspirational spool for printers with very hot nozzles and heated chambers. In MMD's case the parts are implants, and TCT describes them as porous and bioactive. The company makes both standard series implants and patient-specific ones. That means two different production rhythms, repeat runs and one-off builds, inside one operation.
Multi-metal. FIDENTIS takes the most unusual approach of the three. Instead of printing a dental prosthetic in one alloy, it prints several metal alloys in one part. The company's Fraunhofer IGCV roots fit that kind of process-level research, and its stated target is dental prosthetics at scale, not just one-off demonstrations.
Why Share a Building?
The economics are easy to follow even without a balance sheet. TCT reports that the companies hope to lower costs by sharing infrastructure. Medical additive manufacturing plausibly carries fixed costs that do not depend much on how many parts a company ships: controlled production space, laboratory capacity, and the offices and staff needed to run documented, auditable processes. A young company pays for all of that before it sells a single approved product. Splitting the space spreads those costs across three businesses.
The second goal, shortening the path from idea to approved product, is the more interesting one. In regulated manufacturing the slow part is often not printing the part but proving that the part, and the process that made it, behave consistently. Putting a silicone specialist, a PEEK implant maker and a multi-metal dental printer under one roof gives each one easy access to people who have already worked through similar problems in a different material. TCT's report carries comments from the three company leaders. Dr Stefan Leonhardt, co-founder and CEO of MMD, said the companies work with different materials but face the same challenges, from quality systems and approvals to finding the right customers. Maximilian Eils, CEO of Spectroplast, said that in practice the partners solve regulatory questions together and share best practices. Dr-Ing Max Horn, co-founder and Managing Director of FIDENTIS, said that working next to partners with the same mission is invaluable for a young company, and that the hub will regularly invite customers, clinics and universities in. The framing is consistent: the hub exists to make the slow, expensive parts of medical AM less slow and less expensive.
The sources available to us do not give the hub's floor area, the equipment installed, any financial terms between the partners, or details of which certifications cover which parts of the shared space. Spectroplast's homepage does not mention the hub. TCT's article is the primary record, and we did not read a press release from the companies themselves.
A Model Worth Watching
Co-location is not new in manufacturing. What makes this arrangement plausible is that the tenants' core processes differ so much. A silicone process, a PEEK implant process and a multi-alloy metal process are different enough that sharing a building looks unlikely to give away a competitive edge, while the shared problems are much the same for all three: quality systems, documentation, lab testing and the long road to regulatory approval.
It also says something about where medical 3D printing is heading. All three companies are betting on materials and processes that go well beyond commodity polymers: genuine silicone instead of a flexible stand-in, bioactive porous PEEK for implants, and multi-metal parts instead of single-alloy ones. Each of those bets needs specialized expertise, and pooling infrastructure is one way for smaller specialists to afford it.
What It Means for Makers
Most readers will never run a regulated medical production line, but the Munich hub is still relevant for a few reasons.
First, it is a reminder that the materials makers struggle with at home, such as flexibles, high-temperature polymers like PEEK, and metals, are exactly where industrial AM is putting serious money. Progress on true silicone printing and porous PEEK in the medical sector may well shape what eventually becomes available as a service, and perhaps as a consumable, further down the market, though that is our inference rather than anything the companies state.
Second, Spectroplast already sells silicone printing as a service, and its homepage offers instant quotes from uploaded 3D models. For makers and small hardware teams who need real silicone parts, such as seals, soft grips or wearable prototypes, and who cannot get there with TPU or flexible resin, service bureaus like this are a practical option worth knowing about, independent of the hub itself.
Third, the hub's business logic applies at every scale. Makerspaces, shared workshops and small print farms rest on the same idea: pool the expensive, slow-to-pay-back infrastructure so that each member can spend money on the work that sets it apart. The Munich hub is that idea applied to implants and dental prosthetics, with the added overhead of medical regulation.
Bottom Line
Spectroplast, Munich Medical Devices and FIDENTIS have formalized a shared production, lab and office setup in Munich, opened in October in front of 80 guests. The companies cover three demanding material families: silicone, porous bioactive PEEK, and multi-alloy metal. The bet is that shared overhead and shared experience will make it cheaper and faster to turn printed medical devices into approved products. Whether it shortens approval timelines in practice will only become clear over the next few product cycles. The setup itself looks like a sensible template for specialist AM firms that have more process expertise than money.
