NUWC Keyport Becomes First Navy Site Cleared to 3D Print Metal Ship Parts In-House

A Navy Yard Just Cleared a Major Hurdle for Metal 3D Printing

Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Keyport, can now 3D print tactical and shipboard parts in metal without waiting for a fresh qualification every time. The command became the first Warfare Center to receive official approval from Naval Sea Systems Command for a metal powder bed fusion procedure.

The approval covers 17-4PH stainless steel, a maraging stainless alloy used across the fleet for structural components, valve bodies, and fittings. The printer is an EOS M290, a laser powder bed fusion system that builds parts layer by layer from fine metal powder.

Seven Years of Testing Paid Off

The project started seven years ago as a Naval Innovative Science and Engineering effort to fix a specific problem: the Navy's supply chain for legacy parts. Some components are no longer efficiently produced by traditional manufacturers. The tooling is gone, the drawings are old, and the minimum order quantities do not make sense for a handful of replacements.

Additive manufacturing offers an obvious answer. The qualification process was the hard part. The team had to prove that the printer could produce consistent, reliable parts under the rigorous safety standards NAVSEA sets for anything that goes aboard a ship or submarine.

The testing included an intentional 12-hour power outage during a build. Any pause in metal powder bed fusion lets the printed material cool. Hidden metallurgical defects can form. The team wanted to know if a real-world power loss would ruin a part. Destructive testing on the interrupted build proved it did not.

What Changes for the Fleet

Before this qualification, every new 17-4PH part required a fresh baseline and machine qualification cycle. That slowed production and raised costs. Now, Keyport can print these parts on demand and develop part-specific manufacturing processes that other Navy yards can copy.

The practical benefit is speed. Instead of waiting weeks for a supplier to tool up and ship a bracket or fitting, the Navy prints it at the source of need. Andy Bloom, acting head of Keyport's Rapid Prototyping and Fabrication Technology Division, put it plainly: "You can really print what you need when you need it, which is one of the primary benefits of an additive manufacturing capability where you don't have to have the finished part sitting on the shelf at all times."

Bryce Weber, the command's platform readiness and endurance technology lead, called the milestone "a key enabler for the NAVSEA organic industrial base to begin upscaling metal AM technologies in a meaningful way." He noted that the qualification credentials can be transferred to other commands, creating an easier path for additional sites to start printing critical shipboard parts during maintenance availabilities.

What Comes Next

Keyport has already started printing operational parts. The next material on the list is 316L stainless steel, a corrosion-resistant alloy with even broader applications for ship repair and submarine maintenance. The command is also working on in-situ monitoring hardware that captures real-time quality assurance data during the printing process.

If other Navy yards adopt the same qualification framework, the fleet could see a meaningful reduction in parts lead times within the next few years. That is the goal anyway.