Fort Bliss Is Training Soldiers to Qualify Their Own 3D Printed Parts

Soldiers from Fort Bliss have completed a six-week additive manufacturing course taught by the University of Texas at El Paso. The program, called the Advanced Manufacturing for Defense Readiness Certificate, trains enlisted maintainers to design, verify, and print parts for Army equipment. The certification feeds directly into Iron Foundry, the 1st Armored Division's on-post advanced manufacturing facility, which has cut more than $1 million in maintenance costs since January 2026.

Iron Foundry fabricates replacement parts for more than 64 different platforms and has produced over 1,000 parts since it opened. The facility is staffed by allied trades technicians who rotate in from brigades across the division. That rotation is exactly why the UTEP course exists. The depth of design and materials knowledge on the floor varies with every personnel change. The certificate is meant to close that gap.

The syllabus covers additive manufacturing fundamentals, CAD modeling, material analysis, and industrial-level printing systems for both plastic and metal fabrication. Students move quickly from scanning and modeling to actual production: they design a part, print it, then test it under hardness and structural analysis protocols before the piece ever reaches a vehicle. That qualification step is the whole point. Iron Foundry already has machines and a cost savings record. What it lacks is a stable pool of soldiers who can certify a printed part rather than just produce one.

The Army is not the only service experimenting with this model. The Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker trains soldiers to design and print drone parts across resin, filament, and carbon fiber machines. The mission is different, but the skill set is the same: turning a digital file into a field-ready component without waiting for the supply chain. Fort Bliss moved the classroom off post and onto the university campus. Whether those skills survive rotation cycles is the open question.

Iron Foundry has eliminated more than 12,800 days of non-mission capable time. That figure matters more than any single printed bracket or sensor housing. It means vehicles that would have sat waiting for a replacement part were back in service instead. The AMDR program does not invent new manufacturing technology. It teaches people how to use the technology that already exists, well enough to trust it with armor that rolls.