Building Momentum, LLC.
US Marines Training with Building Momentum
In the middle of May, you could read about how Building Momentum is training the US Marines with Lulzbot 3D printers. Since then, they have printed spare parts as a part of the solutions for the shortage of spare parts for raging equipment.
The Next Generation Logistic (NexLog) initiative, led in part by col. Howard Marotto and Captain Matthew Friedell, was established in 2015 to accelerate the development and integration of emerging technologies with 3D printing in the Marine Corps.
“We see it as being absolutely transformative,” Marotto said. “It’s not just about untethering yourself from the supply chain. It’s also about being able to rapidly innovate to the threat in the field.”
Their solution to the shortage of spare parts, has been to print their own parts with the help of Lulzbot and become their own manufacturers. The US Marines design and 3D print replacement handles which has proved to be of much better quality than the ones they have previously received from other manufacturers. The MOARstruder has become a popular printer, and Friedell is very happy with the printer as it prints in only an hour and the parts are super strong.
The Marine Corps has also began intensive training in extremely cold environments. “There’s a snowshoe manufacturer, that I won’t name, but they have these clips that break, and they won’t sell them to us, so we have to buy a higher assembly part,” Friedell said. “So we had Marines redesign them and we’re actually able to 3D print them and throw them on the snowshoes, and now we have snowshoes that don’t fall off our feet.”
They have found 3D printing very useful in situations where you don't really have time to wait three weeks for a new part, now they can just design them and print them themselves in a much cheaper and quicker way than before.
