Australian additive manufacturing company SPEED3D has sold one of its advanced WarpSPEE3D metal printers to shipbuilder Austal USA, a leader in advanced manufacturing for defence applications.
Austal USA a subsidiary of West Australian-based Austal, is spearheading efforts to revolutionise the US Navy’s supply chain by implementing additive manufacturing.
“We are excited to partner with SPEE3D at the Navy’s Advanced Manufacturing Center of Excellence,” said Austal USA's Director of Advanced Technologies, Scott Kasen.
“The very high deposition rates of Cold Spray additive manufacturing make it an exciting technology for large part creation, and process advancements utilizing the SPEE3D system could provide additional capability for manufacturing traditionally cast parts.”
Melbourne-based SPEED3D is an Australian success story, developing advanced additive manufacturing technology to produce parts for a wide range of applications from a wide range of metals, including copper, aluminium, stainless steel, aluminium bronze and now nickel aluminium bronze.
Notably, SPEED3D’s deployable printer system, housed in a shipping container, has been supplied to Ukraine.
The company’s proprietary Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing (CSAM) technology offers cast-equivalent metal parts on-site and on-demand.
The WarpSPEE3D printer uses patented SPEE3D technology, enabling significantly faster and more scalable production than traditional manufacturing. It can build parts of up to 40 kilograms with dimensions of up to one metre by 0.7 metres.
High-density metal parts can be constructed in hours and days instead of weeks or months, accelerating prototyping and product development and minimising operational downtime.
“SPEE3D is thrilled to offer our additive manufacturing capabilities to support Austal USA Advanced Technologies,” said SPEE3D's CEO Byron Kennedy.
“We have worked successfully with the US Navy in the past and understand the unique challenges they face with the need for manufacturing capabilities that are fast, reliable, and easily deployable, and our partnership with Austal USA furthers this commitment to meet the ever-changing manufacturing needs of maritime.”
Austal USA is headquartered in Mobile, Alabama, with service centres in San Diego and Singapore and a technology centre in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The company makes steel and aluminium ships and is under contract for several programs, including the US Coast Guard's Heritage-class Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) and the US Navy's TAGOS-25 ocean surveillance ship among others.