> 3D printer but for chips
how about a farm of electron microscopes? these should work
Canon has been working on an alternative to EUV lithography called nanoimprint lithography. It would be a bit closer to the idea of having an inkjet printer make the masks to etch the wafers. It hasn't been proven in scale and there's a lot of thinking this won't really be useful, but it's neat to see and maybe the detractors are wrong.
https://global.canon/en/technology/nil-2023.html
https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/nanoimprint-lithograph...
They'll still probably require a good bit of operator and designer knowledge to work around whatever rough edges exist in the technology to keep yields high, assuming it works. It's still not a "plug it in, feed it blank wafers, press PRINT, and out comes finished chips!" kind of machine some here seem to think exist.
Also, you know, there's a whole process you'll need to develop. So prepare to be not making money (but spending tons of it on running the lines) until you have a well tested PDK.