Industry and government are investing great efforts to develop renewable energy technologies. One of the most promising technologies in this area is the hydrogen powered proton exchange membrane fuel cell. Gas flow plates, also referred to as bipolar plates (BPP) are critical components of fuel cell designs. The focus of this paper is on the development of additive manufacturing methodologies specifically for complex BPP designs. These low-cost manufacturing schemes combine the ability of 3D printing (3DP) to generate complex patterns with thermal spray technologies that can deposit a variety of functionally designed metallic materials. The manufacturing steps involved are: creation of patterns using 3DP, deposition of multifunctional metallic layers, and subsequently releasing the metal plate. The multi-material plate designs aim to provide the corrosion protection as well as cost and performance advantages. The geometric resolution and dimensional accuracy of these functional plates are presented. This paper also reports on the experimental results of extensive material compatibility and process parameter development tests.