Factorio devs release 247 free STL files to 3D-print your factory

Wube Software, the studio behind Factorio, is giving away a library of free downloadable 3D models so fans can print the game’s machines and creatures at home. The project grew out of a 2024 Space Age playtesting event held with Prusa Research, where an impromptu print of a Gleba ‘Wriggler’ convinced the team to pursue physical models seriously. Rather than sell limited collector’s items — which the studio felt was at odds with its software roots and community ethos — they settled on transport belts as the organizing concept and built a grid-based system that lets printed entities snap together the way they do in-game. The final release covers early-game content: 15 model sets, 65 individual models, and 247 STL files.

Most of the engineering effort went into translating game assets into printable geometry. Each entity generally ships in two variants — a high-precision push-fit version and a high-clearance version for gluing or lower-tolerance printers. The bigger challenge was FDM printing’s need for support structures, which the team minimized by slicing models into pieces that print cleanly and assemble afterward, gunpla-style. Factorio’s isometric art also doesn’t map neatly to real 3D: many in-game machines are visual tricks — collections of free-floating shapes that only read as a coherent object from the game’s fixed camera angle — forcing significant redesign to make them work as tangible objects.

Beyond nostalgia, Wube frames the release as an invitation for its community to remix and iterate on the designs, treating the STL files as a starting point rather than a finished product. It’s a notable example of a developer leaning into open, hackable physical artifacts instead of locked-down merchandise.