My thoughts on discussion on ASM's Advances in Additive Manufacturing for the Fabrication of Complex Military Components

27 Mar 2026

I thank the ASM Advanced Materials Manufacturing Technical Committee for organising a very fruitful discussion on additive manufacturing aka 3D printing for complex military components. 

It is no secret that armed forces require industrial support to operate. An entire military industrial complex builds tools necessary for the armed forces to function. While this does utilize the labour force  effectively through ‘division of labour’ it naturally creates logistical hurdles and dependencies to localized manufacturing ecosystems. 

This is not inherently bad but some autonomy in manufacturing could make the armed forces more robust. Traditional manufacturing techniques leave no room for this. Casting,die forging,smelting need big factories and massive supply of energy to be economically feasible. 3D printing however makes remote manufacturing possible via layer by layer assembly of materials into complex parts. One simple machine can now do the work of an assembly line. 

This is a massive advantage that allows the armed forces to decouple some of the manufacturing and produce spare components, or complex parts on demand. 

The conference demonstrated the ability of Concurrent Technologies Corporation to build metal parts using additive manufacturing techniques like Laser bed fusion,selective laser melting,selective laser sintering ,direct energy deposition,cold spray and others. The US department of war is actively investing in these technologies to make them future ready. 

AM is certainly fascinating but it also has some shortcomings. One of the biggest ones being that it's really slow. If it could effectively produce in high volume then this inherent slow speed might not be such a big issue. Scaling would involve buying multiple machines which themselves are quite complex pieces of equipment involving lasers and chips and other sophisticated parts. For defence purposes such tradeoffs may be acceptable. But for fundamental technologies like say manufacturing materials this is unacceptable.

Yet the intent of the DoW is certainly justified. Innovation in manufacturing is necessary. DoW is focussing on building parts but a similar approach is necessary in building the fundamental units of manufacturing themselves the materials. 

The supply chain constraints don't terminate at a factory; they lead all the way back to mines. Lithium is great until you realise you can only find it in like 5 countries and even there at very specific locations. Iron and steel are the foundation of the modern world but they are found in fixed locations. As long as these dependencies remain, autonomy is impossible. 

Innovation is necessary not just in manufacturing parts but also in what we make these parts with.  Hydrogen,carbon,oxygen,nitrogen,sodium,silicon and iron are the most abundant elements in the entire universe. By maximizing use of Carbon,hydrogen,oxygen and nitrogen in structural and functional applications we could unlock an abundance that is simply impossible with any other material system. 

However this does not come easy. Carbon materials can't be processed like traditional metals. They require rethinking of our manufacturing techniques. Weaving, stitching,cutting become vastly more important than casting or forging in this setup. You shape fibers then solidify them with appropriate matrix followed by curing or treatment. 

While AM can be automated, weaving reduces the technological debt. For most structural and functional applications it's a drop in replacement except for the intricate microchannel based designs where layer by layer assembly remains the only viable choice. 

The discussion focussed on building manufacturing capacity without the industrial overhead of a factory. To truly make that possible 2 conditions need to be met. 

The first is distributed energy generation. No AM system is going to work without electricity. Either you'll need to connect to the grid or install RE generation. But perhaps the most straightforward method is on site generation with hydrogen fuel. It's got high energy density and can be stored in large quantities. For this scheme to work, engines become critical. But even with hydrogen logistics remain a challenge. It can be made less acute with careful design but it never goes away.

The other is distributed materials production.Relying on metals or polymer powders alone is a huge risk. By shifting focus to more abundant materials like silica and carbon true economies of scale can be reached.

While the initiative is taken by defense forces, for civilian entrepreneurs this presents a great opportunity to produce goods using small factories that are built with abundant materials. Gaining self sufficiency in both energy and materials using technology that is simple and yet highly advanced. Integrating the production end to end. 

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