Manager – Expeditionary Support (PM-ES), will conduct an Austere 3D Printing Assessment Event (AE) to identify 3D printer capabilities designed to meet the unique requirements of Special Operations Forces (SOF) Operators in austere environments.
Current U.S. commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) 3D printers are not designed to meet the unique SOF requirements (i.e. size, weight, power, mobility, survivability, etc.) needed in support of USSOCOM SOF missions.
the USSOCOM MTRC program is interested in assessing 3D printer technologies ranging from small – single SOF Operator portable systems with niche capabilities that can be hand-carried and/or transported via non-standard commercial vehicles, to moderate – SOF Team portable systems with robust adaptive manufacturing capabilities that can be palletized and/or transported by C-130 aircraft.
They desire the following system attributes:
-U.S. 3D printer technologies designed, developed, produced, manufactured, and/or supported predominantly in the United States.
-U.S. 3D printer technologies that are self-contained, ruggedized, mobile, and capable of printing at SOF point of need in a wide array of environmental conditions.
-U.S. 3D printer technologies that allow for forward deployment, into the field, at the point of SOF equipment failure, reduce hardware replacement times, enable SOF Operator innovation, are reliable, and/or are easy to operate and maintain.
Interested parties must submit, NLT 30 September 11:59 PM ET. Visit events.sofwerx.org/3dprint for full details and to enter.
Not sure what the benefit would be for a printer to be operator mobile. I could see at the armory or fob. What do they anticipate printing on a mission?
For a perspective you almost have to be in this (AM business) and a leapfrog thinker to see some of the benefits. With a printer (agnostic) and a few other tools it’s something you almost can’t comprehend in a traditional sense.
You can image, scan, duplicate and examine anything, anywhere. In hours-on the long side. CAD work aside, where most mechanical engineers fall flat-this is a decade jump. For example some well known engineering AND manufacturing firms have phased out or repositioned significant to almost all their mechanical engineers because they can’t make the jump in various ways.
The software mimics natualt designs that fool millions of nature optimizing. Imagine a human design a strut and now compare that to a femur. A bone that rarely breaks given the mean average of humans. While the lower leg bones are designed TO break-and heal faster. No design for that in many ways using several materials concurrently. Big jump from 3 plane CAD and a machine that wastes 50-95% of the material in chips on the floor or months and 10-200K for a mold that has the same design restriction, just in reverse.
Scan a boot, done. Scan a face for a perfect bandage, done. Scan a radio component and sent it to be printed before you arrive there-done. That’s just the obvious. The integration optionS can scale infinitely.
There are printers on submarines, carriers and other “areas” and the print options are only unlimited now. We can create new powders that don’t even exist and blend them.
Some tool in another post said that printing is only for prototypes, yeah-OK. They should get a real job and see the real world. We print production parts every day, and faster than traditional productions because the development and iteration time equates to massive cost savings and immediate fielding and testing. Don’t make one to test, make a dozen different versions and test it. M
This is not a jab at the above poster in any way-just a clarification of what’s happening, and going. When the gap is filled between the current users of AM and the people learning it (3-6 year gap), the results are going to be like the Polymer pistol finally catching on. Just wait for the old guys to die off or retire and see the resultant metrics of effectiveness. Say that as a 1911 owner and lover, but fact none the less.