Metal 3D Printing Goes to Sea: US Navy Tests Hybrid Print-and-Mill Container Aboard USS Essex at RIMPAC 2026

Key takeaways

Phillips Corporation has installed a containerized hybrid manufacturing cell — a Haas TM-1P CNC mill fused with Meltio Blue wire-laser metal 3D printing — aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD-2) for RIMPAC 2026.
The system can print new metal parts, repair worn ones, and machine them to spec in a single workflow, while the ship is at sea.
It is part of a distributed manufacturing experiment run by the Naval Postgraduate School’s CAMRE consortium, with 3YOURMIND software coordinating print jobs across the fleet.
At RIMPAC 2024, the same research group showed that 3D printing could cut part delivery times from up to 200 days to hours.
RIMPAC 2026 — the world’s largest international maritime exercise — runs June 24 to July 31 around Hawaii, with more than 25,000 personnel, 40 surface ships, five submarines, and 140 aircraft.

The most interesting machine shop in the world right now is bolted inside a shipping container on the deck of a US Navy warship somewhere in the Pacific. As part of RIMPAC 2026, Phillips Corporation has deployed a containerized hybrid manufacturing system aboard USS Essex (LHD-2) that both 3D prints and machines metal parts — a floating test of whether ships can simply make the components they need instead of waiting months for them, as reported in 3DPrint.com’s July 9 news briefs.

A machine shop in a shipping container

The hardware, installed by Phillips’ federal division, pairs a Haas TM-1P CNC toolroom mill with Meltio Blue, the Spanish company’s blue-laser wire-DED (directed energy deposition) metal printing technology, according to Metal AM Magazine. Wire-fed deposition builds metal up layer by layer from ordinary welding wire; the CNC side then mills the result to final tolerances. One container, one workflow: print a new part, restore a worn one, or machine either to spec.

That combination matters at sea. Powder-bed metal printers are finicky about environment and feedstock — loose metal powder and a rolling ship deck are a bad match. Welding wire, by contrast, is cheap, stable, and already familiar to Navy machinist’s mates.

“When critical parts are unavailable through traditional supply channels, the ability to manufacture or repair components closer to the point of need can help improve readiness and keep systems operational,” said Brian Kristaponis, president of Phillips Additive Manufacturing Solutions.

Why the Navy wants printers on ships

The deployment is an applied research experiment run by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research and Education (CAMRE) and its partnership intermediary FLEETWERX. The problem they are attacking is brutally simple: a deployed ship that needs a broken bracket, impeller, or valve body can wait a very long time for the supply chain to deliver it. At RIMPAC 2024, CAMRE demonstrated that deploying metal and polymer printers could collapse part delivery times from as much as 200 days to a matter of hours, 3D Printing Industry reports.

The 2026 edition scales the idea from “a printer on a ship” to “a manufacturing network across a fleet.” Berlin-based software company 3YOURMIND is supplying the digital backbone — part identification, order management, and production planning — so that a unit that needs a part can have the job routed to whichever printer in the distributed network is best placed to make it.

“It’s about ensuring the right unit gets the right file at the exact right time, so they can print what they need to stay in the fight,” said Chris Curran, CAMRE program manager. The teams rehearsed the setup at two smaller exercises this spring — JIFX at Camp Roberts, California, and Valiant Shield in Okinawa — before going live at RIMPAC.

Why it matters beyond the military

Defense has quietly become one of additive manufacturing’s biggest growth engines: the US Department of Defense’s FY2026 budget allocates $3.3 billion across programs involving 3D printing, an 83% jump over the prior year. But the playbook being tested on USS Essex — hybrid print-and-mill cells, standard welding wire as feedstock, software that treats scattered machines as one factory — reads like a preview of civilian industry’s next decade. Mining operations, offshore platforms, remote wind farms, and cargo fleets all share the Navy’s core problem: they are far from the warehouse. If the RIMPAC experiment proves the model in the most demanding environment imaginable, “print it where you need it” gets a lot harder to dismiss as a slogan.

RIMPAC 2026 runs through July 31. Findings from the experiment will feed directly into future Pentagon decisions on how widely to field distributed additive manufacturing.

FAQ

What 3D printing technology is on USS Essex?

A containerized hybrid cell combining a Haas TM-1P CNC mill with Meltio Blue wire-laser metal deposition. It 3D prints metal from welding wire and machines the parts to final tolerances in one workflow.

How much faster is printing parts at sea than ordering them?

At RIMPAC 2024, the Naval Postgraduate School’s CAMRE consortium showed part delivery times could drop from up to 200 days through conventional supply chains to just hours with onboard additive manufacturing.

What is RIMPAC?

The Rim of the Pacific Exercise is the world’s largest international maritime exercise, held every two years around Hawaii. The 2026 edition runs June 24–July 31 with over 25,000 personnel, 40 surface ships, five submarines, and 140 aircraft.

Is this the first time the Navy has 3D printed at sea?

No — the Navy has tested printers afloat before, including at RIMPAC 2024 and Trident Warrior 2025. What’s new in 2026 is the networked approach: software coordinating production requests across many machines in a distributed fleet-wide experiment.

Sources: 3DPrint.com, Metal AM Magazine, 3D Printing Industry