3D Additive Manufacturing, or plainly speaking “3D printing”, has the potential to change our world in the 21st Century as much as Gutenberg’s movable-type “2D printing” did in the 15th Century. 3D Additive Manufacturing converts information – a digital blueprint – directly and rapidly into physical objects.
This technology drastically shortens time to market, allows customization without additional cost, overcomes limitations of standard machining, and places the production of materials, objects, and functional devices from the hands of few factory owners into the hands of many with access to tabletop instruments with 3D printing capabilities. At the macroscale, 3D Additive Manufacturing of polymers and metals is already a megatrend worldwide.
The Cluster “3D Matter Made to Order” (3DMM2O) aims at bringing 3D Additive Manufacturing from the macroscale to the micro-, nano-, and eventually to the molecular scale and at applying these technologies in three selected application Thrusts.
3DMM2O is jointly carried by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) 
and Heidelberg University . Funding by the German Excellence Strategy , by the Carl-Zeiss-Foundation , and by the Helmholtz Association started January 1st, 2019.