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SPEE3D’S Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing Technology Successfully Prints Metal Parts In Sub-Zero Environments
SPEE3D, a leading metal additive manufacturing company, announced that their XSPEE3D system could successfully operate in a sub-zero environment and produce parts with comparable material properties to the same parts produced in a laboratory environment. SPEE3D was selected to participate in developing, demonstrating, and testing their Cold Spray Metal Additive Manufacturing (CSAM) equipment, along with partners from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) COMET Project and Philips Federal, as part of the Office of The Secretary of Defense Manufacturing Technology’s Point of Need Challenge (PON).
The PON project was managed by LIFT, the Detroit-based Department of Defense Manufacturing Innovation Institute, and it concluded that the XSPEE3D system is well-suited to support the DOD’s goal of expanding expeditionary manufacturing capabilities in extreme cold weather environments for battle damage repair and large metal component production.
Metal 3D Printers At Ukraine’s Frontlines Make Critical Spare Parts
Seven massive Spee3D printers were supplied to Ukraine by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and are likely to be deployed close to the frontlines. Their mission is to rapidly fabricate critical repair parts for more than 40 different armored platforms and aging military equipment systems donated by various nations to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
The fleet of Spee3D metal 3D printers (called WarpSpee3D and priced around $1M each) is not intended to replace normal supply chains when spare parts are attainable. Instead, the focus is on critical parts, or what the military calls “parts of consequence.” Of which there is a constant demand.
Hinges, brackets, attachments, connectors, pumps, levers — all manner of parts, large and small, can halt an advance or cripple an operation. Deployable 3D printing units can fabricate these parts in less than a day, dangerously close to the point of need.