Now this is not just limited to spare parts for military equipment. Future military grade 3D printers may be able to hold a library of ammunition types in its memory and then print out for instance 9mm bullets to restock a depleted supply during a gun battle. 3D printing technology will save soldiers’ lives quite literally because they will not have to wait for a chopper to restock their supply, also the chopper will not have to risk getting shot down by the enemy during its supply run. This will turn out to be a lot cheaper than risking a helicopter and its pilot.

 

The military will also benefit from yet another layer of this printer’s capability which is being able to build customised gear, and equipment that may otherwise not be possible via traditional manufacturing processes. For instance, this can include logical structures which utilize modular designs for a number of different purposes like strong armor on vehicles and aircrafts. A sophisticated computer program will be able to tailor the structures using smaller components which the 3D printer can quickly print on the field if these are damaged. Similar methods are already being used by scientists at MIT, they are printing 3D armor inspired by fish scales which help machines and people stay more mobile than with regular armor. But the idea is yet to be polished and there are a number of kinks that scientists need to work out before it can be field tested.

 

Even though the government and proponents of 3D printers would like us to think that future printers will be able to save lives, cut military expenditure and improve battle strategy the fact is that we are far from it. Almost all military gear including ammunition needs to be built from metals like copper, aluminum, steel, silver and iron. Current 3D printing technology including the military grade printers recently deployed to Afghanistan are not able to print out parts in time. The largest sticking point is perhaps the fact that fashioning metals is time consuming. It takes time for a particular type of metal to be heated and then cooled down and when you’re dealing with a combo of metals the 3D printer also needs to handle its viscosity. The present layer approach to 3D printing fails because in the majority of cases the parts printed even with metal are not durable enough to be practically used to replace tank parts or even fired from a gun.

 

None of the present 3D printing methods which include thermal fusion of polymers and plastics, using the UV spectrum of light to slice polymer resin, using glue to stick together special resin, laminating paper, cutting metals using lasers, or fusing metal particles are able to produce perfect pieces every time. None of these come near to the standards that we would expect from parts manufactured on an assembly line. This means that the military parts produces are in fact not military grade and because of that they are unreliable, not fit for military use and may put more lives in danger that proponents of the technology claim it will save.

 

So why is the US army investing in 3D printing?

 

The U.S Army Research Office has setup a $855,000 grant which is to be distributed between the top 3 teams that are working on the now labelled “4D printing” technology. This is proof that the military does not believe in 3D printing technology or at least present 3D printing methods and hopes to come up with something different to fulfil its purposes. The teams will be rolling out the new Expeditionary Lab Mobile concept with the help of the Rapid Equipping Force. The system will be built into shipping containers and is intended to be manned by both engineers and soldiers. Expeditionary Lab Mobile devices first made their debut in Afghanistan in 2013, and now have three of these units operating in the country.

 

There is also news that the Army Research Labs is also working on its own version of a 3D printer which will cost around $700 to manufacture with the ability to build spare parts for US soldiers in the field. To put things into perspective the price is less than a third of what the price is for the Makerbot Replicator 2 which is a leading 3D printer intended for the consumer market and priced at over $3000 a unit.

 

What can we expect from the military?

 

Apart from technological hurdles another category of obstacles that stand in between all these experiments with the technology and really getting it rolled into the field is the long and often tiresome list of legal and procedural challenges. The legal mess itself can take years if not a decade at the very least to clear up. The biggest problem is the Pentagon’s own arduous approval process which is expected to take years. The US military needs to get all the pieces of equipment first approved via several rounds of testing to ensure that it can stand up to rigorous military conditions prior it to being handed over to soldiers. However, the process is not compatible with today’s fast moving 3D printing technology world. To make things even worse the Pentagon doesn’t yet have the required tests in place for the materials that will be used in 3D printers. In other words they haven’t decided on what materials will be used to print the required parts and ammunition, this is perhaps because they know that existing metals and techniques are impractical.

 

Intellectual property rights

 

Even after the military manages to clear all the bureaucratic hurdles there are then a few unexpected problems which include intellectual property rights. Each and every piece of equipment that is designed for the military but not designed by the military itself needs to be protected. Rights to the equipment are owned by the manufacturers which adds to the complication of managing the technology. These may also include components used as part of the 3D printing process like CAD design files that the 3D printer uses to print objects. Right now nobody is sure how these individual components will need to be managed which means that the military does not yet have a clear strategy in place for 3D or so called 4D printing technology being worked on by the various departments of the military.

 

There is some disorganized forward motion, the most significant of which has been the president’s $200 million program initiative which is aimed at building three manufacturing centers that will mainly focus on 3D printing, two of these centers will fall directly under the US Defense program’s purview. One of these centers will focus mainly on properly streamlining the entire manufacturing process and the other will work on mainly developing lighter, stronger and more versatile materials for 3D printing. The president has also called on Congress to pool in another $1 billion on efforts to build around 15 additional centers to aid in rapid development of this technology. People who think that 3D printing technology will be rolled out alongside the military within the next five to ten years should note that 80% of the research is going into not developing printing or printers but strong and versatile materials. Since, the materials developed need to be military grade i.e. strong and durable, the difficult part is being able to integrate them into a process that is rapid. Metals take time to cool, printing a regular 9mm bullet can take a good six to ten hours. This is unless materials that are as durable as copper and iron, easy to work, cheap to produce, and light enough to carry around are developed.

 

How long will it take for 3D printers to start printing bullets in the field?

 

For someone who has never used a 3D printer the answer to this is not an easy one but one that will mark some sort of progress in this field. Knowing that soldiers can actually print bullets, and gun parts in the field will assure the general public that in fact progress has been made after pooling in billions of dollars. The new 3D printing strategy and the financial back it received in 2013 can be traced back to Obama’s original State of the Union address in 2012, where he talked about 3D printers bringing manufacturing back into the hands of Americans. But how far will that be possible is still up for debate.

 

To address the question of how long it will take till a battle field also becomes a manufacturing plant, the easy answer is not within the next five years. There are numerous technological hurdles that need to be overcome. One of the biggest hurdles is the fact that most military grade 3D printers require a lot more than just printing, the products that emerge from these printers need to be further worked on by experienced experts. This requires good engineering skill, also a lot of the printing done is not precise. 3D printers are not very good at getting the shape and point of a bullet right which is why we’re not going to see bullets anytime soon. Then there is also the question of speed, 3D printers are painfully slow and not because they are built to be slow but because the materials they use to build take time to form. A regular metal bullet can easily take an entire day to print at the very least. So, its fantasy to think that they will be restocking a few million bullets in a few hours or a day anytime soon.

 

Even the most optimistic of forecasts by experts put the possible time by which 3D printers will actually be of any use to the military at 2020. This is provided that a few research projects aimed at finding new materials and field testing new printing methods will yield a positive solution by the end of 2015. Then printers will have to be made portable, plus the cost of the raw materials used to print these items will have to become cheaper. Once all of these hurdles are overcome, 3D printers will need to be extensively tested under battlefield conditions prior to congress pushing an approval through. Perhaps it may not be the same for every country around the globe but most countries that have the money to put into this technology have similar red tape to deal with.

 

3D printing has its limits even for military applications and until these limits are overcome the technology itself is just limited to hobbyist use. This is a lot like what computers were used for in the 70s. However, it took computers just 20 years of evolution to get into the hands of home users and even a shorter time to become portable devices. If that is anything to go by don’t expect 3D printing to do anything useful on the battle field for the next decade. Until then a lot of what we hear is more science fiction than science reality despite billions of dollars’ worth of military backing and the best brains in the world.