Department of Defense Sees Deployable System 3D Print 11 Metal Parts at RIMPAC War Games

SPEE3D, the Australian original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) systems, has participated in its latest war games event, the Department of Defense (DoD)’s Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise in Hawaii. SPEE3D took part in Trident Warrior, RIMPAC’s experimental portion, in participation with SPEE3D’s frequent partner, the US Navy’s Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research and Education.

At RIMPAC, SPEE3D demonstrated the Expeditionary Manufacturing Unit (EMU): an end-to-end CSAM ecosystem housed in two shipping containers, released in May 2024. CAMRE engineers printed a total of 11 parts from stainless steel and aluminum, which DoD will assess as candidates for future use in frontline manufacturing scenarios.

In a press release SPEE3D CEO Byron Kennedy, said, “SPEE3D is thrilled to be included in RIMPAC, the largest distributed advanced manufacturing demonstration the Department of Defense has ever conducted to date. In particular, additive manufacturing has been a major area of interest for the [DoD], and together, we have the same goals to train the military and implement [AM] to print crucial metal parts at the point of need to support modernization and warfighter readiness.”

The government lead on the CAMRE team for Trident Warrior, Lt. Col. Michael Radigan, said, “CAMRE facilitates getting the latest in advanced manufacturing into operational settings and finds ways to unlock additional capabilities. SPEE3D worked side-by-side with our joint participants to further research on [CSAM] and helped us uncover best practices to apply its unique capabilities in expeditionary environments.”

There’s one angle to scaling up AM that I think SPEE3D has a better grasp on than just about every other company in the industry: AM’s scale-up requires organizational change as much as it requires technological transformation. At this point in AM’s technical evolution, in fact, organizational change is likely even more relevant, as the regulatory environment and institutional framework upholding the manufacturing sector attempt to catch up to AM technologies’ latest advancements.

Thus, it is important that SPEE3D and its public sector partners are illustrating CSAM’s readiness to be deployed in as many real-world situations as possible. But it may be even more important that the company and its government customers are establishing a model for the pace at which organizations can incorporate metal AM into their supply chains.

In turn, one project that could serve as an organizing principle for companies and other stakeholders in the AM space would be a ‘task force’ set up to determine how to apply the lessons from the most successful examples of AM scale-up to all areas that are lagging behind. This would be just as beneficial for uniting private and public interests as it would be for uniting different entities within each of those sectors.

Images courtesy of SPEE3D