Result

Spares US forces could not get, printed by the British

"Our key success has been the ability to receive designs and files from the United States sustainment forces and convert them to a suitable UK file format and print parts," says Major Shand, "so that the US can send us files for spare parts that they can't get through their own supply chains. We can print them and provide them to the United States for use on the battlefield."

Why

Repair forward, whatever happens to the supply chain

"It's really important in the future that the REME and equipment support are able to conduct repair forward on the battlefield, and that needs to be regardless of supply chain disruption. So if we lose a supply chain, we need to be able to produce parts forward," he says. "And we also need to be able to link maintainers to a wide network of subject matter experts, which is what we're trying to do here through the use of advanced manufacturing and extended reality."

Equipment

Two polymer printers, carbon-fiber reinforced, able to print on the move

"We've deployed it here with two 3D printers. Both of them are polymer printers. They can print small and high-strength, high-quality nylon parts which are inlaid with carbon fiber to provide that extra strength," says Major Shand. "And they're designed in such a way that they can be deployed in an austere environment, so they can print on the move, or print in any environment that we need them to across the world."

The narration does not name the printer model. On screen, the printing equipment sits in a rugged case marked "FIELDMADE · MOBILE ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING", and the Mark3D customer story linked in the video description covers the Nomad® LW, the mobile printing system Norway's Fieldmade built around the Markforged Mark Two. See our story on it.