14 Service to the Fleet, April 2014

So you’ve seen the headlines how 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has changed the way products are envisioned and created on a global scale. But what you might not know is how additive manufacturing is helping Norfolk Naval Shipyard innovate in and improve on its abil-ity to service the Fleet. Ranging from ship alterations, to determining how to best execute a hull replacement on USS La Jolla (SSN 701), to identifying methods to overhaul the new Gerald Ford-class of aircraft carriers, the NNSY Rapid Prototype Lab’s 3D printer is at the forefront of pioneering best practices in executing ship maintenance. “When engineers have a new design to try, instead of get-ting a whole piece made out of metal or plastic by the toolmakers or machinists, they can say, ‘pop this in the 3D printer.’ That’s the purpose of additive manufactur-ing—try the design out, see how it’s going to fit up, and then we move onto the manufacturing process,” said Bill Harrell, Code 100PI Rapid Prototype Program Lead. “If someone says, ‘I need to see how that motor’s going to fit up on top of that pump housing to see if the clearances are good, or that the bolt holes are going to line up, or to see if the concept is going to look good . . . 3D printing is perfect.” The Rapid Prototype Lab’s 3D printer adds layer upon layer of plaster polymer to build a solid project you can touch, hold and study. “We take a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) draw- ing and transfer it to a laptop which then transfers the parameters and the dimensions to the 3D printer and pretty much tells it what to print. The printer manufactures the part, the part goes to a cleaning station where it’s treated, and you’ve got your 3D part,” explained Harrell. Shipyard products produced on the printer take anywhere from a few minutes—think a NNSY commemorative coin made out of plaster polymer instead of metal—to several hours, such as a multi-piece pipe closure device to quickly secure exposed pipes. For the larger scale

A 3D printed car! A 3D printed gun? A 3D printed edible Oreo!?

By Michael Brayshaw, Code 1160 Public Affairs Specialist

A 3D scale model for training (Photo by Shayne Hensley, Shipyard Photographer)

Service to the Fleet, April 2014 15

jobs, the 3D printer effectively makes wooden and metal shipyard mockups—mockups that ate material and swallowed manhours—a thing of the past. For the complex availability on USS La Jolla begin-ning in spring 2015, the Rapid Prototype Lab produced 3D prints of the hull to help examine how to best re-place it. “It’s a good hands-on conversation piece, to proactively start talking and seeing how we’re going to cut the middle of the boat out,” said Harrell. When shipfitters get around the table and start looking at it and talking, they might ask, ‘how’s that going to work?’ and catch some things [that still need to resolved].” The 3D printer is already helping to determine ways of servicing the new Gerald Ford-class of carriers. “Rather than making something out of metal, which would probably take two to three months just to see fit-up purposes, we print out a 3D part and we can put it on a mockup,” said Harrell. “It’s really Rapid Proto-typing—proving a concept for actual use. Any type of savings can play into this—there’s time, there’s material money, and labor.” For NNSY’s Nuclear Engineering and Planning De-partment (Code 2300), the lab created models of ship alterations for ballistic missile submarines undergoing availability, ultimately saving both money and time. “What they’d do is build this mockup out of wood, and then train with it for the riggers,” said Don Gauthier, Rapid Prototype Lab Sheet Metal Mechanic. “They figured this came to $11,000 and they wanted a cheaper way to do it. So we printed them a little model. The rig-gers and engineers all got together at the desk to figure

out how to rig it in and found out it wouldn’t fit. So we had to do another print that would fit, it saved them $3,000 in rework. They looked at it, figured out how to maneuver it and rig it in. The piece was in an hour, rather than a couple days.” The 3D printer is ensuring a promising future for Con-tinuous Training and Development at the shipyard. The lab has produced a prototype tool for Shop 71 (Painting/Blasting) to use as a continuous training and develop-ment aid for the Navy’s new process of removing paint by laser. The training tool, looking like a hybrid of a handgun and a DustBuster, is estimated to save $3,000 in training man hours and is expected to increase first-time quality. “They wanted something to train with rather than holding the laser itself. So we built them a model of it, and they trained with it in the shop,” said Gauthier. NNSY was the first of the four public shipyards to have a 3D printer and “really started getting the buzz out,” according to Harrell; since then, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard purchased an identical 3D printer, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has several 3D printers and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard has a couple 3D print-ers in their engineering departments. “You can see, down the road in five years, where NNSY Engineering and Planning would have their own prototyping area,” said Harrell. “It’s starting to change the mindset of how we think as a shipyard. We’re not just a shipyard [of personnel] that goes in a bilge to get dirty and turn wrenches; we’re skilled craftsmen who want to stay up with technology.”

Curtis Gent, of the Rapid Prototype Center, removes finished material from the 3D printer (Photo by Shayne Hemsley, Shipyard Photographer)