3D design and printing make for a powerful combination in the world of furniture. Thanks to additive manufacturing, it is now possible to turn creative concepts into functional pieces using almost any material and reducing production times. In this article, we interview Erin Smith, Vice President of Sales at Haddy, a company specializing in 3D printing services for furniture. Her work focuses on transforming design ideas into tangible solutions for commercial spaces from her MicroFactory in St. Petersburg, Florida.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s no coincidence. Haddy is responsible for the first permanent 3D-printed decorative installation at a Disney theme park: a canoe on the iconic Jungle Cruise attraction. Keep reading to learn more about this project and her work with additive manufacturing.
3D printed panels and lamp created for the Disney Accelerator Demo Day.
3DN: How was Haddy founded, and what gap did you identify in the furniture industry and traditional manufacturing?
Haddy started with a simple observation: the way we manufacture physical products hasn’t kept pace with the speed of digital design.
In furniture and the built environment, production still relies heavily on molds, tooling, and global supply chains that can take months to deliver a product. Not to mention the waste that ends up in landfills. This current model makes customization difficult, slows innovation and slows the speed at which new products can be in the market. It also requires retailers to carry large amounts of inventory.
Our founder, Jay Rogers, had been working on distributed manufacturing concepts for years, and saw an opportunity to apply those ideas to large-format additive manufacturing. Instead of designing something and waiting months for tooling and overseas production, we wanted a system where a digital file could go directly into local manufacturing.
That led to the idea of the MicroFactory: a highly automated, digitally driven production environment capable of producing large physical products quickly and close to where they’re needed. The goal is to bring manufacturing back to local economies while giving designers far more freedom in what they create.
3DN: You define yourselves as a 3D digital manufacturer. What does this concept mean beyond offering 3D printing services?
For us, digital manufacturing is about building a factory that runs on data rather than tooling.
Traditional factories are optimized for mass production of identical products. A digital factory is optimized for flexibility. The design file becomes the instruction for manufacturing, which allows us to produce custom products, iterate quickly, and manufacture at scale without retooling.
At Haddy, our MicroFactory combines large-format robotic additive manufacturing, CNC machining, advanced materials, and AI-driven software tools that help optimize printing paths and production workflows.
In practice, this means we can produce a wide range of products — from furniture and architectural elements to molds and boats — using the same core infrastructure. The factory becomes a platform rather than a single-purpose production line.
3D printed furniture from Haddy
3DN: What technologies are you currently using for furniture manufacturing?
Our primary platform is large-format robotic additive manufacturing.
At our St. Petersburg MicroFactory, we operate multiple robotic printing systems that deposit fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites at industrial scale. These systems can produce objects up to 14 meters long and are capable of printing structural components as well as design-driven products.
The robots are hybrid systems that can both print and machine parts, which allows us to move directly from additive manufacturing to finishing operations without transferring parts between machines.
This combination of robotics, digital design, and advanced composite materials enables us to produce strong, lightweight furniture and architectural elements while maintaining the flexibility to customize each piece.
3DN: You recently collaborated with Disney Imagineering on the production of a canoe for the Jungle Cruise attraction at Disneyland. Could you tell us more about this project?
The Jungle Cruise canoe project was a great example of how digital manufacturing can support immersive storytelling.
Disney Imagineering is constantly exploring new ways to create complex themed environments, and large-format additive manufacturing offers some exciting possibilities for that.
Working with our robotic printing systems, we produced a full-scale canoe using polymer composite materials. Because the design process is digital, the geometry could be developed and refined quickly before being printed directly at full scale.
The finished canoe visually resembles a traditional carved wooden vessel, but benefits from modern materials and manufacturing speed. It demonstrates how additive manufacturing can help creative teams move from concept to physical object much more quickly.
The 3D printed canoe for the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland Park.
3DN: One of Imagineering’s key challenges is historical realism. How did you manage to replicate the texture, grain, and visual weight of a traditional wooden canoe?
One of the advantages of additive manufacturing is that surface detail can be built directly into the digital model. Instead of carving wood grain after fabrication, our designers can embed those textures into the geometry before printing. The robotic extrusion process also creates layered surfaces that can be refined through milling and finishing. After printing, additional surface treatments and paint techniques can be applied to further enhance the realism of the material. The goal is to capture the visual character of traditional craftsmanship while using modern composite materials that are lighter, more durable, and faster to produce.
3DN: Any final thoughts for our readers?
Manufacturing is entering a period of transformation and innovation. For decades, production has been optimized for centralized mass manufacturing and global logistics. What we’re seeing now is the emergence of digital manufacturing systems that allow production to happen locally, on demand, and with far more design freedom. Proximal manufacturing allows local economies to grow more quickly and releases the pressure on the supply chain and long overseas lead times.
Large-format additive manufacturing is a key part of that shift. It allows us to rethink how physical products are made, from furniture to architectural facades to boats. At Haddy, we believe the future of manufacturing will be distributed, digital, and sustainable. Our mission is to build a network of microfactories around the world that produce what people need closer to where they live and work.
To learn more about Haddy, visit their website HERE.
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*All Photo Credits: Haddy