Wild Card

While polymer 3D printing is useful in some situations many critical pieces of military systems cannot be replaced by plastic parts. This includes components for weapons systems, vehicles, and power systems. Being able to manufacture replacements for these systems at the point of need, in austere forward deployed environments is critical to solving future supply chain issues and reducing load on logistics systems. Presently, no metal additive manufacturing is used in a deployed environment because no systems currently exist that can function in an austere setting. Our Oxide Direct Ink Write method aims to provide a logistically simple, robust, safe, and deployable solution to additively manufacturing metal parts in an austere environment.

Our military faces ever growing logistical and supply chain challenges, this challenge is even greater for special operations forces who often work deployed far from the extensive logistical support that conventional forces might enjoy, and as reliance on special operators increases these logistical challenges become even more critical. As the military shifts to focus on combating near peer adversaries these challenges grow more intense as well, advanced adversaries will have increased ability to interdict or interfere with logistics operations. All current metal AM methods are either too bulky or too sensitive to be practical for use in austere or far forward environments. Forward deployed metal AM allows soldiers to manufacture replacement parts at the point of need, much more quickly than traditional supply chains could support. Special Operators are some of the most innovative soldiers in the world, and AM is a powerful technology to support soldier innovations, a wide range of parts that aren't part of the current military inventory can be printed to respond quickly and flexibly to changing soldier needs or novel innovations

Oxide Direct Ink Write (ODIW) printing is accomplished by extruding a highly viscous liquid ink, containing metal oxide powder onto a print bed at room temperature and allowing it to rapidly solidify upon contact with air. It does not require lasers or pure metal powders. This allows parts to be printed on a printer with a significantly smaller footprint and low power consumption requirements when compared to other market solutions to metal 3D printing. Parts are then post-processed in a furnace to produce high quality metal parts of a wide range of alloys. This method is more suited to austere environments because the printer is much safer to operate, and the ink is significantly safer and easier to transport, compared to the materials used by other technologies. Because of the systems low weight, cost and power requirements it is suitable for use at all levels and can be used anywhere a polymer printer could be used. We envision this system being something highly useful to forward deployed environment to assist in battle damage assessment and repair, as well as soldier innovations at the front line of conflicts. These could be integrated into forward deployed SOCOM logistics systems such as the Mobile Technology and Repair Complexes

TECHNOLOGY CONCEPT: direct ink write (DIW) printing operates on the concept of a printing material, suspended in a viscous ink, that can then be directly extruded onto a build plate. Inks are manufactured by dissolving a plastic binder, in this case PLGA (poly lactic co-glycolic acid) with a series of chemical solvents (DCM, EGBE, and DBP). The solvents evaporate both solidifying the print and bonding print layers. The concept of DIW is very powerful, and broadly applicable. Many different printing materials can be suspended in the plastic binder. Possible materials include ceramics, metals, energetic materials, and a wide range of combinations of those three, including materials like thermite.

Our project particularly involves suspending metal oxide powders in the ink. We believe this is a simple, robust, deployable way to additively manufacture metal components. Current metal 3D printing systems are very large, expensive, and heavy. Many require the use of lasers and have very high-power requirements. All current methods also make use of very fine pure metal powders, which are difficult and dangerous to store or transport. Pure metal powders oxidize rapidly when exposed to air. At best this renders the powders useless, at worst powders can deflagrate, causing a large fireball. The use of pure metal powders eliminates most metal 3D printers from use in an austere environment. Our system creates parts from stable oxide powders, which can be stored easily and require no special handling. Parts are printed from this oxide-based ink, and then post processed in a furnace, where the plastic binder is burned off, and the

oxides are reduced and sintered into solid metal parts. Our printer and furnace system is significantly lighter, smaller, and less power hungry than any currently available systems.

Another benefit of our system of processing parts is that we are able to produce a wide range of different alloys and material compositions. Our method can produce alloys no other method can. Additionally we can print a wide range of non-metalic materials such, including high quality polymer parts similar to many commercial 3D printers, high density plasticine materials (similar to energetics such as C4), and composite, or multi material parts such as the production of thermite parts.

Our system involves two major parts, the first is the production of useful pure metal alloys through the reduction of oxides, and the second is the method of extruding these alloys through direct ink write printing. Either of these tehniques can be used independantly, depending on the needs of SOCOM and the progress of our development. For example DIW is currently less well develpoed than other methods of AM in terms of the range or complex geometries it can produce, so our alloy production process can be paired with other well developed forms of AM such as FDM printing to make complex parts. Alternatively if the versatility of DIW is desired to be able to produce all the different types of materials we have discussed, DIW can be used with pure metal powders, that while less stable and more difficult to transport, make it easier to produce certain alloys from a materials science standpoint.

These types of tradeoff are something we look forward to discussing with SOCOM to guide forward development.

There are 3 near term challenges we are trying to solve. the first two have already been discussed, namely increasing the range of useful and important engineering alloys we can produce, and increasing our ability to produce geometrically complex parts. The final is developing a compact robust and deployable system integrating our printer, inks, furnace and needed gas supply into a single ready to go package. We have already developed some proposals for this system, but there are significant trade offs in the design of the package that will depend on operator or SOCOM input.