Chromatic 3D Materials Opens a Rocket Propellant Test Site at Camp Ripley

A 3D Printing Firm Is Testing Rocket Fuel at a Minnesota National Guard Base

Chromatic 3D Materials has taken over a test-firing site at Camp Ripley in Little Falls, Minnesota. The 210 square kilometer base is normally used for training service members from multiple branches, plus local police and allied units. Chromatic signed a five-year lease and plans to use the space to develop, validate, and scale next-generation propellant technologies for national defense.

The arrangement came together through the Defense Innovation OnRamp Hub and the Minnesota National Security Ecosystem. It gives Chromatic access to live-fire testing without building its own remote facility from scratch. The company will also work with auxiliary power firm LEMA and the US Army Corps of Engineers to explore whether its material systems can generate safe, transportable power for remote operations.

From Elastomers to Rocket Propulsion

Chromatic started with elastomeric products: grommets, cushioning, industrial parts made through its RX AM process. The focus has shifted hard toward rocket propulsion. The company sees an opportunity to produce solid rocket motor propellant faster and cheaper than traditional methods, using 3D printing to shape the material rather than casting it in large, expensive molds.

CEO Cora Leibig said the Camp Ripley presence lets the team rapidly demonstrate performance, validate manufacturing approaches, and reduce the time required to deliver advanced propulsion solutions to rocket manufacturers. That last phrase is doing a lot of work: the defense industrial base currently cannot build enough precision munitions, and solid rocket motors are the limiting factor in everything from Patriot batteries to HIMARS rockets.

Defense Propulsion Is Getting Crowded

Chromatic is not alone. Xbow has raised $97 million for 3D-printed propellant and solid rocket tech. Prometheus is building a massive rocket motor facility in Indiana. Firehawk and Ursa Major are also chasing scalable, low-cost solid propulsion. The common thread is urgency: Ukraine has shown that wars can burn through thousands of missiles and drones a week, and the US stockpile is not built for that tempo.

Chromatic's advantage may be cost and speed. Its machines are relatively inexpensive, and the company is designing low-cost material systems that could scale to very large production volumes. If live-fire testing at Camp Ripley validates performance, the next step is winning a production contract. That is a big if, but the company has cleared earlier SBIR hurdles and now has the kind of testing environment that defense primes actually respect.

What to Watch

The five-year lease gives Chromatic time to iterate through multiple propellant formulations under real military conditions. Look for test results on thrust consistency, burn rate stability, and shelf life. Those are the metrics that will determine whether 3D-printed propellant moves from promising to procurement-ready.

Military 3D printing continues to expand beyond structural parts into energetic materials. If Chromatic succeeds, it would mark one of the first times additive manufacturing directly enters the munitions supply chain at scale, not just as a prototyping tool but as a production method.