Military Printer Kit

 
 
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ideas rush in

The United States Marine Corps came to us with the need to print anywhere in the world. Oh, and they need to be able to leave it in said location for a month and keep it printing successfully the entire time. No easy task, but one worth taking.

I worked with the USMC to develop a set of requirements, most of which were outlined in their MIL-STD documents, a very long read with strict rules on almost every metric imaginable (angles for which a user can aim their eyes while looking forward).

I was asked to fit:

  • Our most advanced (and heaviest) composite printer

  • Enough material to last a month

  • Every tool needed to service the printer and its components

  • Spares of anything that would critically affect the ability to print

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Proof of concept

Once the specifications where established and the military gave me their choice of Pelican case in which to fit everything inside, I was literally boxed in at this point. This is where it gets fun!

After a few dozen different designs on pen and paper I finally got to work designing the internals of the kit in Solidworks. Fitting everything was not easy, but once that was done the question still remained: would it survive the onslaught of testing the military still had to perform on the case? After all, what good is a military printer if you can’t drop it out of a helicopter!

I performed as many tests internally as I could to instill confidence that this kit would pass their hardest of torture tests. Driving the kit around for hundreds of miles in my 4Runner, controlled dropping the kit onto concrete, heat tests. Ensuring the PCB and electrical components were getting sufficient air while printing was another fun experiment.

In the end, the picture above represented the proof of concept shown to the USMC champion of this project. He was blown away and wanted to take the kit with him that night. This was unfortunately not possible, but the fact he asked made me feel incredible happy that this was indeed what they wanted and more.

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Final Design

Like any good concept car, the stickers on the outside add horsepower. This is the final kit in its closed state, 190 pounds of the best 3D printing you can buy anywhere in the world, and now it will travel to anywhere in the world!

This project taught me three important things:

  1. Never expect the first project requirements the customer makes to be the last. You have to be malleable and work with them, but also know where your expertise should shepherd their ‘wild’ dreams back to the field of reality.

  2. Dynamically testing something you make is incredibly fun. When is the last time you’ve dropped something expensive you’ve made directly onto concrete numerous times?

  3. The importance of specifications. Discover them once, agree upon them early and lock them fast. Both parties will be thankful for the efficiency and knowing exactly what is trying to be achieved.