As armed conflict creates a demand for defense technology globally, civilian-focused companies are pivoting to defense, with companies such as Israeli Massivit 3D at the forefront. The company’s unique printing technology can create large and detailed models quickly and efficiently.
CEO Yossi Azarzar announced Massivit 3D’s entry into the defense industry earlier this year, with the stated goal of establishing an “advanced manufacturing center aimed at strengthening the supply chain for the defense and aerospace industries.”
A growing reliance on unmanned systems has put pressure on manufacturers to produce components faster, a challenge that Lod-based Massivit 3D and other companies aim to solve.
Massivit 3D: From Hollywood to defense
Experts in the 3D-printing world are likely familiar with Massivit 3D, renowned for its massive scale models and props created for clients worldwide. Its creations include car prototypes, a five-foot-six perfume bottle and a three-meter “ultra-realistic” dinosaur.
Massivit 3D counts designers, theme parks, and film studios among its customers, even selling a 3D-printer to Walt Disney Imagineering in 2024.
Its 3D machines print fast-curing materials directly from a a computer aided design (CAD) file, which stores precise geometrical data for a project, eliminating the need for long workflows used in traditional manufacturing.
As Kim Haimovic, the company’s global marketing team lead told Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post at the 13th annual UVID drone-tech conference in Tel Aviv, “Our industrial 3D printers produce large, isotropic molds,” using Sika-based liquid epoxy or polyurethane thermosets.
This allows for the rapid building of full-scale molds, masters, jigs, and fixtures inhouse for composite manufacturing, she said. The result: a fully digital process that replaces what used to be 12-20 weeks of hard work.
Instead of having to go through 19 manual stages just to get a mold, Massivit 3D does it in four automated steps, Haimovic explained.
“This is the only solution allowing you to print an industrial composite mold directly from CAD, with no master and no manual labor,” she added.
Massivit 3D’s shift into defense
The system used by Massivit 3D machines lends itself to aircraft production, something that the company became aware of after more than a decade of civilian production.
“Because composite manufacturing depends on mold production, traditional mold-making processes have been a bottleneck: They are time-intensive, complex, and often outsourced abroad, causing delays and dependency on external suppliers,” the statement continued.
The goal of Massivit 3D’s entry into the industry, the statement explained, was to reduce the time of mold production down to weeks instead of months. As Haimovic clarified, “[defense] and aerospace companies can already get electronics on demand. We’re making it possible to get the composite structures on demand as well.”
“When you’re producing UAVs or aerospace components, timelines are critical. We’re giving manufacturers the ability to respond immediately, instead of waiting for tooling to arrive from overseas.”
Why companies shift toward defense
While there are numerous reasons why a civilian company would change direction into the defense industry, all tie in to recent global developments, such as increasing demands for UASs, composites and automation.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas War, the line between the Israeli civilian and defense sectors has blurred, with the need for military innovation and equipment having risen rapidly. Lucrative defense contracts, sometimes in the NIS billion range, have incentivized companies facing shrinking commercial budgets.
As conflicts increase demand for technology, the divide between civilian and defense is narrowing at a fast pace, especially in countries affected by armed conflicts.
Massivit 3D’s leap from theme-park props to aerospace tooling is one example of how companies reposition themselves to meet new realities, utilizing tighter timelines, disrupted supply chains, and greater efficiency.
Whether these shifts will be temporary wartime adjustments or lasting recalibrations of Israel’s innovation ecosystem remains to be seen.