On the weekend after the Russian assault on Ukraine began, Andrzej Burgs, founder and CEO of Warsaw-based 3D printing firm Sygnis, heard from his industry friends at 3D Tech Group in Lviv. With their country under attack and all kinds of supplies needed, Pavlo Yesyp and Michail Shulgan asked, could Burgs help supply 3D printers and materials to fill the gap?

Soon, he’d filled a bus with 20 printers and more than 800 pounds of the raw printing material called filament to send across the border to Lviv in western Ukraine.

Many 3D printers are relatively small and can be set up in basement bunkers, ideal for wartime production. Then, too, the technology allows parts to be produced at scale in multiple locations at a time, and for the designs for parts to be shared digitally among multiple facilities or individual producers, making it, in some sense, designed for use during a crisis or war.