SPEE3D Takes Cold Spray Metal 3D Printing to Sea at RIMPAC 2026

The first at-sea metal 3D printing deployment

The US Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, and a coalition of research institutions ran the world's first at-sea deployment of cold spray additive manufacturing during RIMPAC 2026. A SPEE3D Expeditionary Manufacturing Unit operated aboard the Canadian supply vessel MV Asterix while underway in the Hawaiian Islands, producing mission-critical metal replacement parts without relying on a distant supply chain.

The exercise ran from late June through the end of July and brought together 30 nations, 40 surface ships, five submarines, 140 aircraft, and more than 25,000 personnel. It was the largest advanced manufacturing demonstration the Pentagon has ever staged. SPEE3D's system was one of more than 50 advanced manufacturing technologies fielded by the Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research and Education (CAMRE) at the Naval Postgraduate School.

What cold spray additive manufacturing does

SPEE3D's process does not melt metal powder. Instead, it accelerates powder to supersonic velocities and deposits it onto a substrate, building dense metal parts layer by layer. That difference matters in the field. The system stays compact, rugged, and free of the flammable powder handling protocols that usually confine metal 3D printing to sealed factory environments.

The EMU on board Asterix combined a containerized XSPEE3D metal printer with a SPEE3Dcell post-processing and machining unit. A part could go from raw powder to finished component without leaving the ship. Twenty-four additional parts came through a shore-based reachback node at the Knoxville Armory in Tennessee, giving the exercise a distributed ship-to-shore manufacturing network.

The numbers from the exercise

Across both production nodes, the teams manufactured 32 mission-critical metal parts. Twenty-nine of those reached full completion, including heat treatment and machining. The at-sea node produced eight parts directly on the open deck in heavy seas. The shore node produced 24. An aluminum-bronze hatch knob manufactured aboard Asterix and an aluminum-bronze cover box printed in Tennessee and then installed on the ship became the publicly recognized demonstrations of the network.

Byron Kennedy, SPEE3D's CEO, framed the deployment in plain terms: 'That is what it means to bring production to the fight.' He noted the system has now proven itself across sub-zero, tropical, battle-damage, and at-sea conditions. The at-sea test closes a specific logistics gap. Ships operating across the Indo-Pacific can wait days or weeks for a replacement part to arrive. On-demand manufacturing at the point of need removes that delay entirely.

Why this matters beyond the Navy

Cold spray metal additive manufacturing has been gaining ground in energy, mining, and defense maintenance for several years. The RIMPAC demonstration is not a laboratory test. It is a field test with operational users, real supply chain constraints, and an actual warship underway. For industrial buyers watching the technology, the validation value is high. An energy major exploring additive manufacturing for production parts is a different endorsement than a startup printing trinkets.

The Pentagon's framing of RIMPAC 2026 as its largest-ever advanced manufacturing demonstration signals that point-of-need production is moving from experimental programs to actual doctrine. SPEE3D's participation has become a biannual tradition, but this year's maritime twist opens a new use case. If the Navy can print spare parts at sea, the argument for the same capability on offshore rigs, remote mining sites, and forward air bases becomes harder to ignore.