SPEE3D Prints Metal Parts at Sea for the First Time During RIMPAC 2026

SPEE3D has marked a new milestone for expeditionary additive manufacturing: its cold spray metal 3D printing system operated aboard a deployed naval vessel for the first time during RIMPAC 2026, the world's largest joint maritime exercise held off Hawaii from June 24 through July 31.

The EMU Goes to Sea

The company's Expeditionary Manufacturing Unit (EMU) deployed aboard the Royal Canadian Navy supply ship MV Asterix, a former container vessel converted for military use. The EMU combines SPEE3D's containerized XSPEE3D cold spray printer with a SPEE3Dcell post-processing and machining unit, meaning metal powder can go in on one end and a finished part comes out the other without leaving the ship.

Unlike conventional metal 3D printing, SPEE3D's Cold Spray Manufacturing (CSM) process accelerates metal powder to supersonic velocities and deposits it onto a substrate without melting. The result is dense, near-net-shape metal parts produced in hours instead of weeks. The system is built to run on open decks, in rough conditions, with minimal infrastructure.

32 Parts, 8 of Them at Sea

Across the exercise, SPEE3D and its partners produced 32 mission-critical metal parts. Twenty-four were manufactured through reachback capability at the Knoxville Armory in Tennessee, while eight were printed directly aboard the MV Asterix. Of those 32 parts, 29 went all the way through heat treatment and machining before being returned to service.

The at-sea demonstration was not a US Navy operation. SPEE3D worked with the Naval Postgraduate School's Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research and Education (CAMRE), the Army Research Laboratory, the Tennessee Army National Guard, and the University of Tennessee's Defense Development and Applied Research Center (DARC). The Canadian connection came through the Royal Canadian Navy, which hosted the EMU aboard the Asterix as part of a coalition demonstration.

Why It Matters

Naval logistics in the Indo-Pacific face a simple arithmetic problem: ships operate across thousands of miles of ocean, and resupply takes days to weeks. The ability to print replacement metal parts on or near the platform cuts that wait to hours. SPEE3D CEO Byron Kennedy noted that the system ran on an open deck in heavy seas during the exercise, a practical proof point that the technology can survive the conditions it will actually face.

Retired US Marine Corps Lt. Col. Chris Curran, CAMRE NPS program manager, put it plainly: the ability to produce, post-process, and evaluate parts while underway has direct implications for fleet readiness. The RIMPAC demonstration joins a growing list of military exercises where 3D printing has moved from novelty to operational tool.

The Bigger Picture

CAMRE deployed more than 50 advanced manufacturing technologies during RIMPAC 2026 across 40 surface ships, five submarines, 140 aircraft, and personnel from more than 25 nations. SPEE3D's was the cold spray contingent, but it was not alone: polymer printers, CNC systems, and hybrid wire directed energy deposition machines all appeared during the exercise. The Pentagon has framed RIMPAC as the largest advanced manufacturing demonstration in Department of Defense history, and the evidence from this year's event supports that claim.