AI and 3D printing cut wait times for military parts repair in San Diego

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) -- The military is using 3D printing and artificial intelligence (AI) to create parts in a way that's revolutionizing military technology.

The work being done in San Diego, both on base and by local companies, is reducing wait times for parts and fixing issues on joint force aircrafts and ships in record time.

“This is Uber for manufacturing, delivered at the speed of Amazon across the globe for nuclear-grade propulsion parts. It's challenging when you're doing that in a contested environment and that's what's really exciting about this particular project," Lt. Colonel Michael Radigan with the Marine Innovation Unit said.

On Tuesday during Exercise Trident Warrior, the Navy’s Experimentation Arm, Radigan and his team showed how the military is operationalizing advanced manufacturing.

Aircrafts and ships can't fit every backup part they would need, and instead of bringing the fleet back to base for a repair, they are now bringing 3D printing equipment on board, often housed in a mobile fabrication center.

“We’re using cutting edge technology," Jacob Lopez the Lead Manufacturing Technologist with Naval Surface Warfare Center Corona Division in Fallbrook said. "We need to make sure our warfighters are safe, we can get them home, save lives.”

“The lead time here I believe was between 6 and 9 months. A $30,000 part, we did it in three days," Lopez said. He trains military members on how to use the product, so they can repair equipment in the middle of a battlefield.

If a part is made off site, depending on where the military boat is located, crews can also send parts to the ship using a drone or autonomous boat.

All of the equipment and brain power behind this isn't just housed inside the military, they are using advancements from outside companies, many local to San Diego.

“We 3D print metals inside of here, we 3D print stainless steel and we use a process called binder jet printing," said Steven Richter with Dynavos, a company based out of Poway. “We’re printing individual piece parts for the amphibious assault vehicles.”

“Typically parts can be made within a few hours," said Melanie Lang, CEO and Co-founder of FormAlloy, based in Spring Valley. "You will get the same quality that you would expect from traditional manufacturing with this laser welding process.”

But the equipment onboard an aircraft can be even smaller.

Sitting in the cargo bay of a helicopter, Conrad Macy, a Fleet Support Team Engineer at Fleet Readiness Center, showed how his patent can fix a broken beam inside the helicopter, even mid-flight, using a cold spray technology.

“A process like this could take months, years to actually remove this beam and put another one of these things in, could take you hundreds of hours to actually have it ripped out and put a new one in. If you can actually repair it in an afternoon, it’s a great money saver and a resource saver for the fleet," said Macy.

But the technology isn't just helping replace and repair parts, it's helping with medical needs in the field.

“A servicemember was out in the field, they broke their wrist. They would scan the arm to get the shape of the arm, they would push that file back, someone would reengineer that into a cast and they would print that cast in flight," Lt. Colonel Radigan said. He also said this helped the doctors in a medical aspect figure out what the problem was as well.