As the pressure rises for the defence industry to meet the challenges of advancement and cutting edge solutions in defence, an article in australianmanufacturing.com offers 5 ways metal additive manufacturing (AM) can help achieve these goals.
Metal additive manufacturing presents the opportunity to make real gains in defence development and can completely transform the sector.
Velo3D illustrates 5 ways that AM can be the catalyst to this transformation:-
- Maintaining legacy equipment
Maintaining and servicing legacy equipment by providing a reliable source of parts to extend the life of existing assets. - Supply chain agility improvement
The defence sector can significantly improve the reliability and lead times for crucial parts by looking to modern metal AM solutions. - Advances in metal AM improves competitiveness
By utilising AM, the defence industry will be able to produce complex parts, notably in the critical field of hypersonics. - Repeatable production of key components in near-theatre operation
According to the article by Velo3D, one advantage of using metal 3D systems in military applications is the ability that manufacturing centres can be moved up-theatre to send critical parts the front lines need on-demand. - Less dependency on foreign manufacturing
The tactical advantages of AM is that it reduces the dependency on importing foreign parts and requires less specialist labour.
See here for more of an expansion on these points in australianmanufaturing.com or see the full document by Velo3D here.