Stratasys is heading to Formnext with one machine it can talk about and one it won't. The company says it will pull the cover off a new high-volume polymer production system in Frankfurt, but it has withheld the name, the process and the specifications. The machine it is willing to discuss is the F870, a large-format FDM platform that Stratasys launched on September 9, 2026, with Toyota and Rivian as early adopters. The F870 will make its European debut at the show, alongside a set of materials, software and post-processing updates spread across the rest of the lineup.
Formnext 2026 runs November 17 to 20 at Messe Frankfurt. According to VoxelMatters, the unveiling of the unnamed system is set for 1 pm on opening day. Here is what is actually known, and what isn't.
What is the mystery machine?
Officially, nobody outside Stratasys knows yet. The company has described it only as a high-volume polymer production system. It has not said whether the system is extrusion, vat photopolymerization, material jetting, powder bed fusion or something else, and it has not given a build volume, throughput figure, price or ship date. CEO Yoav Zeif is quoted in the pre-show announcement, but the substance of the reveal is being held for the stage.
That leaves the phrase itself as the main clue, and it is a modest one. "High-volume" and "production" are words every industrial vendor uses, and they say more about the intended customer than about the technology. The message is that Stratasys wants this machine judged on how many good parts it makes per shift, not on how impressive a single print looks. Anything beyond that, including which of Stratasys' existing technology families it builds on, is guesswork until November 17.
What is the F870, and why does it matter?
The F870 is the better-documented story. Stratasys pitches it as a large-format FDM system with the longest heated build capacity in its class, aimed at tooling, fixtures and end-use parts. VoxelMatters lists the fully heated chamber at 1,000 x 610 x 610 mm, with support for extended unattended operation.
The "fully heated" detail is the part experienced FDM users should notice. Anyone who has printed ABS or another engineering polymer on an open-frame machine knows what happens when a long part cools unevenly: corners lift, layers split and the part bows. Those problems get worse as parts get longer. A heated chamber keeps the whole part at a more uniform temperature while it prints, which is what makes meter-scale parts in engineering materials realistic rather than a gamble. A 1,000 mm axis means a jig, a drill guide or a check fixture for a large assembly can come off the machine as one piece instead of several sections glued or bolted together.
Unattended operation matters for a different reason. Large parts take a long time to print, and a factory tooling shop wants jobs that run overnight and over weekends without someone checking on them. Reliability over long builds, not peak speed, is what decides whether a machine like this pays for itself.
Who is using it?
Stratasys named two automotive early adopters at launch: Toyota Production Engineering in Georgetown, Kentucky, and Rivian Automotive in Plymouth, Michigan. Both were evaluating the system ahead of commercial availability. The launch release includes comments from Rich Garrity, Stratasys' Chief Business Unit Officer, framing the F870 around factory-floor manufacturing applications at scale.
Toyota will also be on the Formnext program: a Toyota talk is scheduled for November 18. Car plants are a natural fit for a machine like this. They use large numbers of custom fixtures, assembly aids and gauges, change them whenever a model or line changes, and pay heavily for machined replacements and the downtime spent waiting for them.
What else is Stratasys bringing?
The rest of the Formnext slate is incremental but practical, and it covers most of the company's technology families:
- Investment casting on SLA. Somos ShellCast resin, paired with GrabCAD Print Pro's ShellGen tool, runs on the Neo800+ stereolithography system to produce antimony-free investment-casting patterns. Foundries burn patterns out of ceramic shells, so what the resin leaves behind matters, and an antimony-free formulation targets that directly.
- Post-processing for Origin P3. A new sCure unit handles post-processing for the Origin P3 photopolymer platform. Post-processing is where many resin workflows slow down or become inconsistent, so a matched unit is a sensible addition.
- A tougher PolyJet material. ToughONE Black comes to the J3 and J5 PolyJet printers, aimed at functional prototypes that are judged on both performance and appearance.
- Aerospace qualification data. Stratasys is presenting NCAMP qualification data for Antero 800NA and Antero 840CN03 on the F900. For aerospace buyers, Stratasys says the independently reviewed data gives manufacturers a shared basis for qualifying end-use parts.
The company is also involved in the Formnext Defense Summit on November 17, the same day as the system unveiling.
What It Means for Makers
None of this hardware is going to end up on a home workbench. A 1,000 mm heated FDM system bought by Toyota's production engineering group is a factory tool. Still, there are reasons for makers to pay attention.
First, the F870 confirms where the hard engineering problem in extrusion printing lies. Hobbyist printers have gotten dramatically faster, but the jump from a well-tuned enclosed desktop machine to a meter of warp-free engineering polymer still comes down to thermal control. Industrial vendors are spending their effort on heated volume and long, unattended jobs. Makers who print large parts in demanding materials face the same physics on a smaller scale, which is why enclosures and chamber heating keep showing up in prosumer machines.
Second, the jig-and-fixture use case Toyota and Rivian are buying into is exactly the work many makers already do for small shops and side businesses. Seeing automakers commit to it at full scale is a strong argument that printed tooling is a production practice, not a stopgap.
Third, the materials announcements, particularly the antimony-free casting resin and the NCAMP data, show the industry's attention moving from printers to qualified processes. For anyone selling printed parts to customers who ask what material is in them and how it was validated, that shift will eventually reach the smaller end of the market as well.
As for the unnamed system, the right approach is to wait. Stratasys has given a time, a place and a category, and nothing else. We will know what "high-volume" means at 1 pm on November 17.
