Motorola may be trying to become the company with the most customizable, futuristic, smartphones. Most recently, Motorola has made an agreement with 3D Systems to develop a "high-speed 3D printing production platform" for Motorola's new Project Ara.

If you haven't heard of Project Ara, imagine the customizability of the Moto X, but on an insane level: baked down into the body of the phone, where the user puts every hardware option together like Legos. That's what Motorola wants to create, and now apparently it wants the Lego smartphone hardware blocks built by 3D printing machines.

"Project Ara was conceived to build a platform that empowers consumers all over the world with customization for a product made by and for the individual," said Avi Reichental, President and CEO of 3D Systems in a release. "3D printing promotes a level of sustainability, functionality, and mass personalization that turns these kinds of global ambitions into attainable local realities. Project Ara combines two exponential technologies, and we expect that the resulting high-throughput advanced manufacturing platform will have far reaching implications on the entire digital thread that stitches together the factory of the future."

While Motorola is pushing in experimental directions with what a smartphone can be, it also looks like it will push 3D Systems to new levels of what 3D printing can do. 3D Systems is going to expand a lot of its 3D printing capabilities, including multi-material printing capabilities, meaning it's not just going to be the plastic parts printed - conductive materials and even functional parts will be printed using both additive and subtractive 3D printing techniques simultaneously in an "integrated high-speed production platform." Motorola says that if 3D Systems can convincingly develop this production system, the Google-owned company will make 3D Systems its exclusive fulfillment partner.

Project Ara, both in product and now production technique, is all about the do-it-yourself ethos, at least in theory. Ara is a free, open hardware platform that works in hardware on the same principle as Google's Android OS has worked in software: low barriers for entry, an open system where anyone can innovate, and maximum customizability. Ara is an "endoskeleton" or "endo," which is a frame that modules can be stuck into place to give anyone's Ara smartphone any abilities they want - and none they don't. So a user could "build" a decent processor, mid-level touchscreen, and high-end camera sensor if he or she were a photography nut, while a gamer would invest more in the screen and processor.

The idea is similar to Dave Hakkens' "Phonebloks," the video explainer of which has gone viral in the past few months.

On the production side of Project Ara, 3D printing itself has gone quickly from hard-core hackathon DIY curiosity to just barely on the margins of mainstream. For example, earlier this year, Staples announced it would start selling 3D printers online and in its brick-and-mortar stores.

But, as 3D printers have become more easy to use, they still require more technical knowledge, more money, and just a higher level of interest in manufacturing objects yourself, than the general public is willing to invest. Taking that to the next degree means the high-level 3D printing and production system Motorola is asking 3D Systems to develop is not likely to make its way into any tinkerer's garage, anytime soon.