Nonprofit suit against 3D printer company passes two-year mark

Nate Schlueter: Environmental testing at Eden Village 3 site was a two-year process.

While a nonprofit organization that’s built two tiny home communities in Springfield has been navigating legal challenges to bring a third such development to fruition, officials at The Gathering Tree say site work is ongoing.

Eden Village 3 is designed as a tiny home development of duplexes on nearly 5 acres in the 2400 block of West High Street in the Tom Watkins neighborhood near Kearney Street and Kansas Expressway. The Gathering Tree began building its first Eden Village of tiny homes in 2018 for the chronically homeless and disabled population in Springfield. The first Eden Village has 31 houses, while the second development, which opened in November 2021, has 24.

Nate Schlueter, Eden Village chief visionary officer, said getting the third one developed has been a significant challenge, in part because The Gathering Tree remains involved in a federal lawsuit it filed against Mudbots LLC, a Utah-based company founded in 2020 that builds and sells 3D robotic printers. The Springfield nonprofit decided to purchase a pair of 3D printers in January 2023 from Mudbots at a cost of $1.6 million to build the duplexes. However, the nonprofit in its lawsuit alleges the printers haven’t worked as promised. Mudbots, in a countersuit filed in September 2025, alleges Eden Village used the equipment incorrectly and repeatedly violated the company’s terms of purchase.

Schlueter said Eden Village continues to work through engineering issues with the equipment and still intends to use the printers for the third development.

“They’re continually working on the printers to fine-tune them and things like that, but that’s still our intention,” he said, adding he’s uncertain of the time invested to date to get the equipment working as desired. “It’s hundreds, if not thousands of hours of trying to rebuild something.”

As The Gathering Tree is a nonprofit, Schlueter said he started Eden Building Solutions LLC in 2023 to serve as a construction company for the development.

“It seemed like to be able to have our liability insurance and things like that, we needed to start a construction company,” he said, noting Eden Building Solutions also was named in the countersuit.

Employees with Eden Building Solutions and excavation business Altom Construction Co. LLC have been on-site at the development this month working on stormwater preparation. It’s work Schlueter said must be completed before plumbers and electricians can begin applying for and obtaining permits to start underground utilities. Winter weather, particularly in the aftermath of last month’s snowstorm, has slowed progress, he said.

“Now when you go out there, you can see where the parking lot’s going to be, where the community center’s going to be, where the roads are going to be, and it has a stormwater retention pond,” he said.

Schleuter said obtaining building permits from the city should not be a problem, noting he’s already had meetings with officials about the development. He noted the city operates under the 2018 International Building Code, which does not address robotic construction.

“We have engineered testing and drawings and everything that we need to provide them when the time’s right to move forward,” he said. “But you can’t pull a permit for a house until you’ve got your stormwater done and you can’t build a house until the electric and the plumbing permits are done.”

Martin Gugel, Springfield’s director of Building Development Services, said through meetings with Eden Village, the two sides have identified a pathway that will meet the building code. At this time, he said the city has no major concerns about the organization using the printers for the development.

Long litigation
Ben Stringer, owner of Stringer Law LLC, is the Springfield attorney representing Eden Village. Stringer said he is working with attorneys in Utah on behalf of Eden Village, as the case was transferred last year to the District of Utah federal court at the request of Mudbots.

While documents filed by Mudbots in its countersuit include signatures by several representatives of Eden Village, including Schleuter, on nondisclosure agreements and invoices, there is no signature from the Springfield-based organization on a copy of the universal terms of purchase Mudbots submitted in its court filing. However, the 55-page terms of purchase document does include numerous handwritten notes such as “refused” in connection with Eden Village allegedly violating terms of its warranty, including not documenting via video assembly and disassembly of the printer upon receipt. Mudbots also alleges Eden Village was aware of the requirements in the terms of purchase but has not complied with many of them.

The terms of purchase document filed by Mudbots covers myriad requirements on how a buyer can and can’t use a printer purchased from the company:

• Buyer must protect the print site and restrict access by unauthorized personnel by whatever means necessary.

• Sites and printer need to be guarded night and day. Buyer warrants that the printer will not be unattended at any time.

• Buyer will provide and require print and finishing team to wear safety vests or shirts clearly representing Mudbots logos when operating the printer.

• Buyer acknowledges that the printer and accessories will not be operated without a certified pilot having been trained by seller. Training for replacement pilots will be scheduled during new customer trainings in Utah. Cost for subsequent pilot training is $2,500.

When reached by Springfield Business Journal via email, Mudbots CEO James Lyman Ruesch sent a copy of the counterclaim document but didn’t respond to any questions about the case. The company’s attorney of record in the case, Steven Rinehart, filed a request to withdraw as counsel late last month. The court granted the request Feb. 6. Rinehart didn’t reply to a message from SBJ by press time.

“It’ll basically pause work in the case while (Ruesch) is given time to find new counsel,” Stringer, the attorney for Eden Village, said.

Additionally, Stringer is one of the attorneys representing Illinois-based Ascend Construction Solutions, which also is involved in separate federal litigation with Mudbots. Similar to the Eden Village case, the lawsuit Mudbots filed against Ascend involves its universal terms of purchase. Ascend backed out of buying a robotic printer from Mudbots and placed a hold on a $328,364 down-payment check after learning about the terms of purchase, according to court documents. Mudbots then sued Ascend, which subsequently filed a countersuit.

Rinehart also was the attorney of record for Mudbots in the Ascend case and was granted a request last month by the court to withdraw, District of Utah records show.

Stringer said he is in the middle of discovery in both cases, adding he’s uncertain how long the litigation might go on.

“We’ve asked for the opportunity to take (Ruesch’s) deposition, and we’ve turned over hundreds of documents, and they have provided us with thousands of documents,” he said, noting those include purchase orders.

Regarding when Eden Village was aware of the terms of purchase, Schleuter referred questions to Stringer, who declined to get into the factual details of the case.

“The bottom line is, I think that The Gathering Tree has operated in good faith from the very beginning with the fully transparent intention of trying to figure out ways to affordably build homes for the chronically unsheltered,” Stringer said. “That’s always been our intention. It remains our intention. And it’s really unfortunate that we’ve had this experience with this company, but sometimes unexpected things happen, and you have to figure out how to solve those problems.”

Eden Village isn’t the only local company utilizing 3D printing for a construction project.

Grant Miller, owner of Springfield Glass Co. and past president of Springfield Contractors Association, said his company has used 3D printing before on projects. However, Miller and Megan Herzog, SCA executive director, said they were unaware of other construction companies using the technology.

“As far as using 3D printing for walls or other major building elements, I’m not aware of technology that can economically handle the complexity and scale of typical commercial buildings just yet,” Miller said via email. “We have used it to make small custom parts that would have otherwise required detailed design work and costly custom machine shop work for small-quantity needs.”

Another delay
In addition to the litigation, Schlueter said Eden Village also had to navigate an environment-related delay for around two years, beginning in August 2023. An attorney with an organization trying to mitigate contamination at a Kerr-McGee superfund site called Schlueter notifying him he should be aware of a small possibility that the High Street site could be impacted. Creosote was used for about a century to treat railroad ties at the former Kerr-McGee plant in the High Street area that began operations in 1907, according to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

Schlueter said he and Stringer were able to have the 4.25-acre site tested for contamination at no cost to Eden Village.

“And then we waited for results forever,” Schlueter said, noting he received verbal notice from Greenfield Environmental Multistate Trust LLC in July 2025, followed by a letter in November 2025, that the site is not contaminated.

“There is no elevated risk of exposure due to chemicals of concern from soil at your property. No further soil sampling and no removal of soil from the property is planned at this time,” Greenfield Multistate Trust officials said in a letter Schleuter provided to SBJ.

While waiting for results, Schleuter said no site work was done for over two years, noting the potential liability was too high.

“The city certainly would’ve allowed us to do stuff, but then you worry if it is contaminated, what kind of risk you’re putting contractors in,” he said.

As for the completion of Eden Village 3, Schleuter said he’s made multiple estimates before and been wrong. For now, he’s declining to provide a timeline for opening.

“I just know that we’re out there working every day,” he said. “I don’t know how long it takes to do the utilities for all those homes and stuff like that.”

He said multi-panel electrical boxes were recently ordered, but he was told there is a roughly two-month turnaround time.

“But we have to be done with the stormwater, which is what they’re working hard on right now, so that we could start pouring slabs,” he said. “Then those slabs have to cure for a while before you could put the weight of a house on them.”