Via EOS Partnership, Texas’s ACMI Is the First Customer for the AMCM M 8K 3D Printer

EOS’s two major announcements in the last few months have been the launch of the EOS M4 ONYX at Formnext 2025 and the news from a couple of weeks ago that the company is investing $3 million in its Texas logistics and manufacturing facilities to enable increased U.S. production and to better support North American customers. Now, EOS has made an announcement with the American Center for Manufacturing Innovation (ACMI) that demonstrates how its recent moves align strategically.

ACMI represents a unique intersection between venture capital and private equity, real estate development, public-private partnerships, and advanced manufacturing. The Texas-based organization has announced that it is the first customer for the M 8K 3D printer made by EOS sister brand Additive Manufacturing Custom Machines (AMCM), a powerhouse featuring an 800*800*1200 mm build volume, and 8 1.2 kW nLIGHT beam-shaping lasers.

In the announcement, the partners also revealed that ACMI has already purchased an M4 ONYX, making the advanced manufacturing accelerator one of the first publicly-known owners (if not the first) of the new machine. ACMI has leveraged wins like a 2022 Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III award to streamline the validation of digital manufacturing processes for strategically critical industries.

ACMI owns properties in regions across the country, where it plans to utilize a multi-tenant model to support the renewed buildout of the U.S. manufacturing landscape. ACMI plans to use the AMCM M 8K  for applications directly relevant to its Pentagon contracts, including rocket chambers and fuel tanks.

In a press release about ACMI’s partnership with EOS, including its purchase of the world’s first AMCM M 8K, John Burer, Founder and CEO of ACMI, said, “These new capabilities from EOS will play a key role in accelerating development and production timelines, delivering direct benefits to defense manufacturers and the American industrial base. This technology will help drive the factory floor of tomorrow—making American manufacturers more competitive and resilient across multiple sectors—while enabling the development of breakthrough products, hardware, and machines essential to our national security. None of this would be possible without the partnership of a global leader like EOS.”

Meanwhile, Greg Hayes, Global Senior VP of EOS’ consultancy Additive Minds, said, “This partnership with ACMI represents a major step forward in accelerating the adoption of AM as a core manufacturing technology for the United States. By combining EOS’ decades of engineering expertise with ACMI’s vision for scalable production ecosystems, we’re explicitly enabling defense and aerospace manufacturers to move from concept to qualified production at an accelerated pace. The addition of systems like the AMCM M 8K and the EOS M4 ONYX into ACMI’s campuses give the U.S. industry access to capabilities that were previously out of reach, and we’re proud to support this mission to strengthen domestic manufacturing and national security.”

This partnership is a milestone for EOS on multiple levels. ACMI’s nationwide presence and string of big Pentagon funding awards mean that EOS has secured a pipeline to a host of potential customers in precisely the high-value markets that the company is targeting with the M4 ONYX, as well as with its AMCM releases.

That reinforces the point I made in my write-up on the M4 ONYX launch: EOS is mastering the dual-use strategy. If you look into the details of the DPA Title III award for an “innovative manufacturing pilot program” that ACMI received in 2022, the purpose of the project is ultimately to “scale the program into other sectors important to national security, like microelectronics and clean energy.”

Thus, ACMI is the exact sort of customer that a company like EOS needs in order to scale both sides of its dual-use credentials simultaneously. Given ACMI’s interest in beam-shaping, EOS’s potential to attract both civilian and defense customers with the same capabilities should be enhanced by the release later this year of the M4 ONYX FLX, which will also feature nLIGHT’s beam-shaping lasers.

With a presence in both the EU and North America, a core value proposition that is optimized for users on both the military and commercial sides, and offerings across the entire AM market, EOS has advantages in all the right places to capture the gains from long-term rebalance of global supply chains. Through its collaboration with ACMI, EOS now has an even clearer path forward for showcasing all its strengths.

Images courtesy of EOS