Steven Camilleri, the co-founder of 3D printer maker Spee3D and his key staff just returned home from Jasionka, Poland, where they spent the past few weeks training the Ukrainian military on 3D printing metal parts.
Seven massive Spee3D printers were supplied to Ukraine by the U.S. Department of Defense through 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.
Parts of Consequence
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.
“When you have a hinge on a troop carrier that’s broken, and the 400-kilogram door won’t stay open, that’s a problem,” says Calum Stewart, who helped lead the Poland training program for Spee3D.
Another part of consequence could be the specialist tool for the gun on the Australian M113 that was only ever produced 40 years ago by one OEM and is no longer made, but you can’t repair the gun without it, Stewart continues.
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.
Battle damage repairs are what Spee3D printers were made for. In fact, from the minute the team from Spee3D landed in Poland with their 3D printers, they were approached to start designing and making badly needed parts of consequence.
“These critical metal parts were not big or complex or heavy, but they stopped military platforms from working, and spares would take months to arrive,” says Stewart. “Now they can make them in 30 minutes.”
In actuality, the designing, printing, heat treatment, and machining takes more like hours, yet, in the span of a morning, the seven printer units can be manufacturing dozens of parts.
Training Ukrainian Soldier Engineers
Just more than a dozen Ukrainian soldiers were sent to Jasionka to train with Spee3D. They were eager to learn the new equipment, which until now has been available only to militaries in the U.S., UK, Australia, and recently Japan.
Training 12 hours a day for 15 days, the Ukrainians, which included career soldiers and newly drafted engineers conscripted especially for this program, were not the students Spee3D is used to.
“There’s a big difference when you’re training someone for preparedness versus training someone when the war drums are banging,” says Chris Harris, Spee3D’s vice president of defense. “This is the first time I’ve been involved in additive manufacturing training when the students’ lives were literally at risk.”
The classroom and practical work covered everything from five-stage engineering design theory and nine-stage risk management process to metallurgy and operating the printers themselves, all translated into Ukranian.
“These guys were getting a three-year degree course in the space of two weeks,” says Stewart. “We worked to get the absolute most out of every hour. They were so inquisitive and eager to learn, and the level of questioning was really quite high. They would have worked 20 hours a day.”
Spee3D isn’t a large company, so it was all hands on deck for this operation. In Poland, conducting the training with Harris, Stewart, and Camilleri — who is also company CTO— were Chief Revenue Officer Paul Maloney and Technology Product Manager Matthew Harbridge.
Both Harris and Stewart are former military themselves with backgrounds in equipment maintenance and engineering, so they know what the Ukranians will face in the field.
“They’re going to be brought a problem by another soldier who will say, ‘I need you to print me this piece?’” says Stewart. “But that’s the wrong approach. They don’t need to print a part, they need to know how to solve a problem.”
Although newer military equipment may have digital design files that enable engineers to more easily 3D print spare parts, Harris and Stewart anticipate the Ukrainians mainly will design parts from scratch using computer aided design (CAD) software. They may even be able to come up with better functioning parts than the originals, which is a unique advantage of additive manufacturing.
Not Just Any Metal 3D Printers
The DOD has been working with Spee3D through various field trials and has a keen interest in what the company’s metal 3D printers deliver: solid metal parts completed in a matter of hours from a fully mobile containerized printer deployable virtually anywhere.
Originally developed with the Australian army — Spee3D is an Australian company — the WarpSpee3D unit has been field tested on a Naval ship and during live-fire exercises. The Ukrainian conflict gives the company a chance to learn from the Ukrainians as they push the machines’ limits.
Spee3D printers use a method of metal 3D printing called cold spray additive manufacturing, which is particularly applicable to frontline environments because it doesn’t use lasers or gases, like other metal 3D printing technology. Instead of melting metal, this method uses kinetic energy to bond metal particles together in a solid state to create a final part.
The WarpSpee3D is also extremely fast and energy efficient. It can build large parts up to 1 meter in diameter or 40kg in weight in several metals. For example, this four-and-a-half pound aluminum bronze gunners ratchet pictured below was produced in 60 minutes.
Cold spray AM can also repair and coat metal parts, essentially spraying and bonding metal onto an existing part, which is also used to add additional shapes or features.
The WarpSpee3D is relatively easy to operate, says Harris, and, fortunately for the Ukrainians, much of the language gap is mitigated with on-screen instructions in pictures.
Impact on Ukraine’s Readiness
“Significant,” is how Harris characterizes the effect of seven WarpSpeed 3D printers on the general readiness status of the nation’s defenses. “Not upfront, we have to get through the early adoption stage and the learning stage, but once they’ve got it, I think it’s going to be significant.”
Spee3D is contracted to support these printers and the soldiers who operate them for the next few years. The company expects to be back in Jasionka training more Ukrainian soldiers to be additive manufacturing engineers on the frontlines.
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