3D printing revolutionizing battlefield logistics: Weapon of the Week

All right, folks, we talk a lot on the show about how to get resupply to soldiers, sailors

Marines on the tactical edge. And, you know, things break. So what do you do when you're out

on an island, maybe somewhere in the Pacific, and you need some more parts and, you know

Ace Hardware is not exactly down the street. Well, joining me now for our Weapon of the Week

this week is Bruce Lemaster with Obsidian Solutions Group. Bruce, thank you so much for

joining us today. Sure, Ryan. So we are talking about your trailer that you have set up here. It's

all about getting resupply to folks at the tactical edge with 3D and adaptive printings

Walk me through it. So we hear this all the time. The folks on the front line, the expeditionary

folks, they want capability to print parts in theater, but no one to date has really come up

with a definitive answer of how that should happen. So we put together a concept. We've got

a pop-up tent here essentially from HDT's well yeah this is their X-pop this this unit breaks

down into a small trailer size unit that can be carried by an Osprey taken right out to the front

lines dropped on site we pop the pop-up here pull out the front door and we can put printers in here

in this situation we brought two resin based printers our zip pro our zip desktop printers

And we also added the ferro arm which is a reverse engineering inspection slash scanning device So if something breaks in the field we can reverse engineer it enter it into our CAD data

dump that CAD data to our printers. We can print the parts in theaters. And within a few hours, we could have replacement handles, replacement fixtures

whatever it is needed on the polymer side of things. We need metal

We can substitute one of these resin-based printers. we can put a directed energy deposition type metal printer in here

So there are many options. We're just trying to push the issue and say, hey, we have options

Let's get together and tell us what you really need on the front line. We can configure this and make it happen

Absolutely. You know, Bruce, palletized options is such a big thing, and that seems like this is essentially like a palletized 3D printer that you're providing the military

Yeah, so there are some options out there. Other folks are doing Connex boxes with big units

This is a much smaller unit, so more transportable. We can't get the big powder bed-based metal printers in here

but we can certainly do resin printers, extrusion-based printers. We can do the subtracted energy deposition

So there are plenty of options here. We're trying to force the issue and get them to commit and say

yes, that's what we need on the front line. We'll configure it, and we'll put it out there

Bruce, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your time. Appreciate it. All right, folks, that's going to do it for us this week on Weapons and Warfare

for our Weapon of the Week