Chromatic 3D Materials Opens a Rocket Propellant Test Site at Camp Ripley

From Print Lab to Test Fire

Chromatic 3D Materials has opened a dedicated rocket propellant test site at Camp Ripley in Minnesota. The new facility lets the company 3D print rocket propellant and static-fire it in the same place, cutting out the delays and risks of shipping energetic material between locations.

The site came together through Defense Innovation OnRamp Hub: Minnesota and the Minnesota National Security Ecosystem. Those groups linked Chromatic with the Minnesota National Guard, giving the startup access to a military range where it can iterate faster. LEMA, a local expeditionary power company, is also involved, exploring how portable solar generation could support forward-deployed propellant production and testing.

What Chromatic Is Actually Printing

The company uses a platform called RX-AM, short for Reactive Extrusion Additive Manufacturing. It started as a way to print durable elastomers and was later adapted to print rocket propellant based on polybutadiene binder chemistry. The key trick is that the propellant can be printed directly onto or inside structural parts, which opens up grain geometries and thrust profiles that conventional casting cannot match.

Earlier this year, Chromatic reported a prototype static-fire test that held combustion pressures above 1,800 psi without failure. Camp Ripley is the next step: a permanent home where those prototypes can move into a repeatable test cycle.

Why Co-Location Matters

Right now, much of the U.S. solid rocket motor supply chain is fragmented. Propellant might be cast in one facility, shipped to another for testing, and qualified somewhere else. Chromatic is betting that additive manufacturing plus on-site testing can compress that loop. It is a smaller-scale version of the strategy Ursa Major is pursuing at its 400-acre solid rocket motor test facility in Colorado.

The defense angle is hard to miss. The U.S. has spent years trying to rebuild domestic solid rocket motor capacity, and startups are using 3D printing as the wedge. Camp Ripley gives Chromatic a place to generate real firing data close to the institutions that will eventually decide whether printed propellant is flight-ready.

The Bigger Picture

This is not about novelty prints. Chromatic wants to prove that 3D printed propellant can move from lab demo to production cycle without losing the geometric freedom that makes additive manufacturing attractive in the first place. If the Camp Ripley tests keep hitting pressure targets, the next conversation will be about scaling: bigger motors, more test stands, and real flight hardware.

For now, the milestone is operational. Chromatic has a range, a printer, and a partner network. The question over the next year is whether the data coming out of Minnesota can convince rocket motor customers that printed propellant is ready to leave the lab.