US Navy Submarine Installs Markforged 3D Printer
Virginia-class submarine USS New Hampshire (SSN 778), part of the US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), now has a Markforged X7 field edition additive manufacturing (AM) platform installed onboard. NAVSEA’s AM Research and Development Program worked with the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Philadelphia, NSWC Carderock, and Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Newport to optimize the X7 field edition for the USS New Hampshire.
It would be somewhat surprising if this weren’t the first installation of a 3D printer on a US Navy submarine, although the announcement of the news, via the publication Naval Technology, doesn’t explicitly refer to USS New Hampshire’s X7 as such. In any case, even though the X7 prints nylon composites, this development seems as significant as a similar announcement from last year, which involved the first metal AM platform to be permanently installed on a US Navy surface vessel.
NAVSEA chose the X7 because the printer displayed the capacity to remain stable in simulated shipboard scenarios, highlighting what an enormous business advantage it is for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the 3D printing industry to even be selected to participate in war game exercises. That the X7 also appears to be user-friendly seems to have been another point in the machine’s favor. According to the crew of the USS New Hampshire, using the platform required no in-person training: its operators were all able to learn to print simply from the instructions that came with the X7.
About a year ago, the US Navy announced its submarines would start featuring 3D printed parts in 2023, and the Navy’s AM activity has both branched out, and expanded, since that announcement. In many ways, maritime could be the ideal sector for deploying AM, and tracking the weekly unfolding of sector increasingly bears that out.
That is the case concerning the US military, along with militaries around the world; and the progress is happening in the public sector, as well as in private industry. And as that progress continues, the thread I’m most curious to follow involves announcements like the present one, where AM is done not only for seagoing vessels, but on them, too.
Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter
Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.
You May Also Like
3D Printing Webinar and Event Roundup: March 30, 2024
Things are slowing down a little this week, but there are still several interesting 3D printing webinars and events for you to attend. Read on for all the details! 3D...
Mark Peng Tackles Both Sides of the SLA 3D Printing Market: Printers and Materials
Anyone who has been involved in stereolithography (SLA) for the past decade or more has witnessed the technology’s rapid evolution. The broader category, vat photopolymerization (VP), has grown to include...
Why ‘Chemistry for Dentistry’ Is Really Revolutionary – AMS Speaker Spotlight
Do you remember when the boundaries of the term “revolutionary” was limited to historic achievements like a war of independence, the polio vaccine, or the invention of the internet. In...
Ash’s Declassified Survival Guide to Running a 3D Printing Makerspace
So, you just got a new job running a makerspace, or you’re interested in starting one. Great! But, now what? A makerspace is essentially a place where you make things,...