Hyundai Heavy Industries 3D Printing, Electrospinning & NAVSEA

MRO and digital inventories is a quickly growing area. Now classification/advisory firm ABS has partnered with Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), powder bed fusion OEM CScam and technological institute KITECH in a joint development agreement (JDP) to make a digital inventor solution. This is a notable alternative to the Wihelmsen and Thyssen created Pelagus3D. In this case the focus will be on the on board manufacturing of repair parts and spares. I don´t think that putting a powder bed fusion printer on a ship is a good idea, but apart from that love everything about that.

Australian cold spray firm SPEE3D is participating in the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) SALVEX experiment at Naval Base Pearl Harbor in Oahu. There the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) will deploy a XSPEE3D unit along with a SPEE3Dcell that includes a 3 axis CNC mill and a furnace to try to simulate repairing a stricken ship underway. This could be huge for SPPEE3D and the industry. 

Electrospinning is promising but expensive retarding research in the area. Now a paper by Vojtěch Skoumal, Jiri Pechousek, Levent Parali and Muhterem Koc aims to change this by making a 3D printed electrospinning unit that costs less than $2000.