Every year at 3DCentral begins with the same question: how do we deliver more value to collectors, more opportunity to commercial operators, and more capability to the print farm that makes everything possible? The 2025 roadmap answers that question across five strategic areas: an ambitious design pipeline, the launch of our Quebec-made filament line, the introduction of on-demand custom printing, expanded artist partnerships, and significant growth in the Commercial License catalog. Here is what each initiative entails and why it matters.
Design Pipeline: Quality and Volume
Over 200 new designs are in various stages of development for the 2025 catalog. This is not a number inflated by simple color variations or trivial remixes. Each new design represents a distinct sculptural concept that goes through the full development cycle: concept sketching, digital sculpting, test printing, quality validation, and production parameter documentation.
Articulated Figurines: The Fastest-Growing Category
Articulated figurines, designs with moving joints and poseable components, remain our fastest-growing product category. The 2025 pipeline includes designs with new joint mechanisms that deliver smoother movement and more stable poses than previous generations.
The engineering behind articulated prints is fascinating and demanding. Each joint must balance freedom of movement against structural integrity. The tolerances between mating surfaces must account for material shrinkage during cooling, layer line orientation effects on flexibility, and the practical reality that collectors will repeatedly adjust poses over the figure’s lifetime. Our designs from community artists like Flexi Factory have pioneered print-in-place articulation that requires no assembly. The joints print as part of the figure and become functional immediately after removing the print from the build plate.
Monthly drops of 15 to 20 new products keep the catalog fresh and give collectors regular reasons to return. This cadence balances the desire for new content against the production and quality validation requirements that each new design demands. Rushing designs to market compromises quality. Holding them too long misses market timing. The monthly cadence represents our calibrated balance between these pressures.
Explore the current range of available designs across our figurines, gnomes, and ducks collections.
Quebec-Made Filament: Vertical Integration
Our Quebec-made filament line enters beta testing in Q1 2025, and this initiative represents something more significant than simply adding a product category. It is a vertical integration step that gives us control over one of the most critical variables in print quality: material consistency.
Why Material Matters
Every 3D printer operator has experienced the frustration of a filament that prints differently from one spool to the next. Color variation, diameter inconsistency, moisture content differences, and additive formulation changes between production batches all affect print quality in ways that are difficult to diagnose and impossible to fix without changing material.
By producing our own filament, we eliminate this variable for our production fleet. Every spool that enters our Laval facility has known properties because we controlled the manufacturing process. This consistency directly supports our quality pass rate and reduces the calibration adjustments required when switching between spools.
Beta Testing Approach
Initial colors in PLA and PETG will be available to Commercial License subscribers first. This is deliberate. Commercial operators are the most demanding filament users because they need consistent results across large production runs. Their feedback on our filament will be more rigorous and more useful than casual user testing could provide.
The beta approach also aligns with our broader strategy of providing exceptional value to commercial license subscribers. Access to production-grade filament tested on our own 200-plus printer fleet is a tangible benefit that differentiates the commercial license from competitors’ offerings.
On-Demand Custom 3D Printing Service
Our custom 3D printing service is targeted for mid-2025 launch, and it opens an entirely new dimension of what 3DCentral offers to customers.
How It Works
The service follows a straightforward flow: customers upload an STL file, receive an instant automated quote based on the model’s volume, material selection, and quantity, and then proceed through standard checkout. The printed piece ships from our Quebec facility with the same quality standards applied to our catalog products.
Focus Areas
The on-demand service is specifically focused on decorative and collectible objects. Custom figurines, cosplay props, display pieces, and personalized decorative items represent the sweet spot where our production expertise delivers maximum value. We are not trying to compete with industrial prototyping services or mechanical parts manufacturers. We are applying our decorative printing excellence to custom customer designs.
The pricing engine includes volume-based discounts that make the service increasingly attractive for multi-unit orders. Whether someone needs 10 copies of a custom wedding favor, 50 units of a convention exclusive, or a single prototype of a personal design, the quoting system handles the calculation transparently.
Quality Assurance for Custom Work
Custom prints receive the same quality inspection as catalog products. This is a meaningful differentiator from print-on-demand services that ship without inspection. When a customer receives a custom piece from 3DCentral, it has been examined by the same quality team that maintains our 97 percent pass rate on production work.
Expanding Artist Partnerships
The artist partnership program is expanding in 2025, bringing more talented designers from the 3D printing community into the 3DCentral ecosystem. The program is structured as a genuine creative partnership rather than a simple licensing arrangement.
Partner artists including Cinderwing3D, McGybeer, Zou3D, and Gob3D bring distinct creative identities that diversify our catalog and attract collectors who follow specific artists. Each partnership is built on fair compensation, creative autonomy for the artist, and production support from our team. We handle the printing, quality control, shipping, and customer service, freeing artists to focus on design.
For collectors, expanded partnerships mean more variety, more creative perspectives, and more reasons to explore categories they might not have considered before. For commercial license subscribers, more artist partnerships mean a larger, more diverse catalog of production-tested files for their own commercial operations.
Commercial License Catalog Growth
The commercial license catalog is targeted to grow beyond 5,000 designs by mid-2025. This growth reflects both new designs entering the catalog and the systematic addition of existing catalog items that complete the production testing requirements for commercial release.
API integration for print farm automation is also in development. This is the first step toward AwesomePrinter integration, allowing commercial operations to pull file updates, access new designs, and manage their licensed catalog programmatically rather than manually downloading files.
The combination of a 5,000-plus design catalog, production-tested files, and API access creates a commercial license offering that supports professional-scale operations. Learn more about the Commercial License and browse the shop to see the quality of designs available.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How often does 3DCentral add new designs to the catalog? A: 3DCentral adds 15 to 20 new designs monthly through regular drops. These include seasonal collections, artist collaborations, and original 3DCentral designs. Each new design goes through full production testing and quality validation before being listed in the shop and added to the commercial license catalog.
Q: Will Quebec-made filament be available for individual purchase? A: Initially, the Quebec-made filament is available through the beta program for Commercial License subscribers. Future retail availability is planned but will follow the beta testing phase, which validates the filament across diverse printer brands and environments. Subscribe to the newsletter for updates on retail filament availability.
Q: What file formats does the on-demand custom printing service accept? A: The on-demand service accepts STL, OBJ, and 3MF file formats with a maximum file size of 200MB. Uploaded files undergo automated geometry validation including manifold checks and minimum wall thickness verification to ensure printability. The system provides instant feedback if a file requires modification before it can be quoted.
