From Four Minutes to Two: How Upside Parts Is Using AI to Close the Speed Gap in 3D Printing

Now, as AI contributes productivity gains in simulation, quality assurance, and root cause analysis, one Boston-area manufacturer is betting that AI is the missing ingredient for production-speed additive manufacturing.

The pressure: parts in hours, not weeks

Roman Arkhangelskiy, Founder and Managing Partner of Upside Parts, describes customer expectations that will sound familiar to any job shop. In an interview with Ian Wright, senior editor at engineering.com, he explained:

"Every week, we get a call from someone after hours. And the call is basically the following: 'I'm coming right now and I'll be there in 30 minutes. I'll give you a 3D model and then I'm going to wait in your parking lot because I need this part in a few hours.'"

That demand for instant manufacturing isn't driven by impatience alone. Arkhangelskiy says that two years ago, customers were telling Upside Parts that China was shipping parts in three weeks, even with delivery barriers. Beating that three-week mark became the company's initial target — and the turnaround has only gotten shorter since.

The action: AI as production orchestrator

Rather than chasing faster printers alone, Upside Parts focused on the friction between a finalized design and a shipped part. The company uses AI to onboard new projects, route them to the appropriate paths of production, and monitor production capacity and printer availability from moment to moment.

"The friction right now is not about one particular thing. Printers are getting faster and better every year. Materials seem to be evolving every week. Really, it's about combining the processes in a way that makes everything more efficient."

The outcome: order-to-print in minutes

The results are measurable. Upside Parts has compressed the interval between receiving an order and starting the build dramatically:

"One month ago, we had a four-minute threshold. Now it's two or three minutes. In two or three minutes from when you order, we start printing."

That four-minute threshold dropping to two or three minutes in a single month suggests the gains are compounding, not plateauing.

The human question

Faster, more automated manufacturing raises an obvious question: what happens to the people? Arkhangelskiy doesn't dodge it — and his answer has shifted. He says he has seen more and more AI-generated CAD files arriving at Upside Parts with fewer and fewer mistakes in their designs.

"A year ago, I thought the era of professional engineers will last much longer. I was hoping we'd survive for a longer period of time, but I changed my mind."

"We're moving towards fully robotized and AI-driven manufacturing cells, and that will start a discussion about how people can still maintain control over AI and what it will be producing in those cells."

That concern about human control over autonomous systems echoes anxieties surfacing across the wider AI discourse, including recent news surrounding OpenAI and an alarm raised by a former Anthropic employee. Arkhangelskiy's framing makes the worry concrete: it's not abstract agents, it's manufacturing cells.

The China calculation

Competing with China was one of the original drivers behind Upside Parts, and he sees AI as the only viable lever for closing the manufacturing gap.

"I'm not sure how to shift this gap [between China and the United States] but I know that if we don't start to implement more AI and robotics in our manufacturing, this gap will only increase."

The five-year bet

His longer-term vision combines advances in materials and hybrid machines with the AI layer already running his facility:

"We see people breaking limitations with cross-material and cross-technological machines, and hopefully they will end up in our robotized facility, which will be doing everything at Amazon-like speed."

And for the engineer waiting in the parking lot, part in hand? Arkhangelskiy's prediction:

"Just wait five more years, and you'll get it."

Whether AI resolves additive manufacturing's speed paradox remains an open question. But at Upside Parts, the gap between quoting and printing is already measured in minutes.