Did You Know That MakerBots Are Assembled by Hand in This Brooklyn Factory?

Everything ends up here eventually, but Made in Brooklyn is a column exploring native, born-and-bred borough creations.

Brooklyn-born MakerBot Industries is a leader in the futuristic field of personal, on-demand 3D printing. And the bulk of their wares are built in a 170,000-square-foot factory in Industry City

In case you’ve never used one, MakerBot printers can create just about any physical object you dream up.

Each printer works sort of like an extremely elaborate hot glue gun. It takes in plastic, melts it, and pushes it out. The plastic hardens as it cools, and the machine strategically layers the melted plastic to build the desired object.

The company was founded in 2009 in a Dean Street workshop, moving into its current headquarters in MetroTech in 2013. In the summer of 2015, MakerBot opened their Industry City factory in Sunset Park.

The company is known as the Prometheus of the 3D printing world — it was one of the first to release an affordable desktop 3D printer for the common maker.

Despite a series of ups and downs, including an October layoff of 20 percent of the company, MakerBot is intent on staying in Brooklyn, even with the hefty price of real estate.

“Brooklyn is itself a brand and it became a part of the MakerBot brand. And vice versa. MakerBot is part of Brooklyn,” MakerBot Plant Manager Diana Pinkus said at the 2015 Make It in Brooklyn Summit.

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