Cold Spray Metal 3D Printing Goes to Sea at RIMPAC 2026

A U.S.-led advanced manufacturing team demonstrated the ability to produce mission-critical metal replacement parts aboard a vessel underway during RIMPAC 2026, marking the first at-sea deployment of a SPEE3D cold spray manufacturing system.

The Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research and Education (CAMRE) at the Naval Postgraduate School, working with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory and other partners, deployed more than 50 advanced manufacturing technologies during the exercise.

Among them was SPEE3D's Expeditionary Manufacturing Unit (EMU), which operated aboard Canadian support vessel MV Asterix, demonstrating distributed production of replacement components from ship and shore.

During RIMPAC, SPEE3D systems produced 32 mission-critical metal parts. Twenty-four were manufactured through reachback capability at the Knoxville Armory in Tennessee, while eight were produced at sea aboard Asterix. Of the 32 parts, 29 were taken through the complete manufacturing process, including heat treatment and machining.

The EMU combines SPEE3D's containerized XSPEE3D metal 3D printer with a SPEE3Dcell post-processing and machining unit, allowing components to move from metal powder to finished part without leaving the ship.

Unlike conventional metal additive manufacturing processes that use heat to melt material, SPEE3D's Cold Spray Manufacturing (CSM) accelerates metal powder to supersonic velocities and deposits it