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This paper presents the prospect of 3D printing technology to generate artificial soil analogs with the goal of modeling the mechanical behavior of coarse-grained soils. 3D X-ray CT scans of natural angular and rounded sand particles have been used to generate angular and rounded particle analogs using the polyjet 3D printing technology. A comparison of the scanned natural sand particles and the 3D printed particles demonstrates the ability of 3D printing technology to reproduce the shape and size of the sand particles. The results of oedometer compression tests on the angular and rounded natural and 3D printed particles are used to demonstrate the effect of constituent material (i.e. quartz versus polymer) stiffness on the measured soil compressibility and investigate the normalization of the response using the Hertz contact theory. The results provided in this paper also include comparison of the small-strain moduli–mean effective stress relationship obtained for the natural and 3D printed soils. This paper illustrates the potential use of 3D printed analogs to model the mechanical behavior of coarse-grained soils and identifies future research needs for implementation of the proposed normalization scheme within the critical state soil mechanics framework.