Ruggedized: How USMC Innovation Officer Matt Pine Navigates 3D Printing within the Navy – 3DPrint.com

June 21, 2025

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Disclaimer: Matt Pine’s views should not the views of the Division of Protection nor the U.S. Marine Corps

All through this decade to date, the navy’s adoption of additive manufacturing (AM) has superior throughout such a various vary of purposes that it’s arduous to think about how the protection industrial base may very well be pushed to maneuver any sooner than it already has. However, if there’s one trait that has enabled the navy to be historical past’s single strongest accelerator of technological change, it’s the angle of by no means being glad.

I don’t know II Marine Expeditionary Drive (MEF) Innovation Officer Matt Pine, of the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) II MEF Innovation Campus at Camp Lejeune, past the interplay it took to write down this text. However that was sufficient to see that he’s by no means glad with the tempo of technological progress. Clearly, that is an asset for the Division of Protection (DoD): with out the people on the bottom who assume the duty of shifting issues ahead each day, the complete group’s industrial progress would stagnate.

U.S. Marine Matt Pine (third from proper) with fellow Marines. Picture courtesy of U.S. Marine Corps Corporal Casandra Lamas, through DVIDS.

Pine needs to allow as many people as potential to contribute to that very same development of U.S. navy manufacturing and assist modernize the DoD’s technological acquisition course of. His efforts in direction of reaching that goal have been formed by firsthand expertise, navigating by the trial-and-error that comes with studying on the fly:

“I used to be the coaching lead for 3D printing out in Okinawa, and we received DoD Innovation Cell of the Yr. Then I left, and some of the opposite key gamers that had been there working with me left, and the complete program died,” Pine recalled. “Seeing that was very disheartening, but it surely additionally made me understand, hey — we’ve gotta get this functionality built-in. It must be how we expect, how we work. And it must be handled as a supplemental supply of provide as a substitute of merely as a know-how. So the final couple of years, what I’ve actually been engaged on with 3D printing is getting it built-in.”

Pine repeated that final half twice (“Getting it built-in, getting it built-in”) in a approach that appeared to be simply as a lot for his personal profit as for mine. “Getting it built-in” is his mantra.

It’s beginning to get outcomes. The world that Pine exists in is essentially formed by the World Fight Assist System (GCCS), the DoD’s digital logistics platform. Every department has its personal model: the USMC’s known as GCSS-MC. Since its inception over a decade in the past, GCSS-MC has been on the forefront of the Marines’ industrial modernization effort.

Nonetheless, Pine had a gripe with the GCSS-MC when it got here to AM, and it’s a frustration that may seemingly be acquainted to anybody liable for incorporating AM into the availability chain administration workflow of a giant group:

“I’ve been working with the GCSS because it first got here out,” Pine instructed me. “However as soon as I began working with 3D printers, particularly, I’ve been fascinated about how there needed to be a approach for us to have the ability to see the printers on the platform, and observe what they’re producing, similar to how we observe each different half that comes into the Marine Corps by the GCSS. No person might determine how one can get that seen, and taskable.”

The tactic that Pine used to vary that actuality wasn’t sophisticated, but it surely was efficient:

“Mainly, I complained loads, might be the easiest way to explain it,” the Marine defined. “I might go to my native guys who had been liable for the system, and they might say what I used to be asking for wasn’t potential. ‘We are able to’t do it.’

“I saved asking, although. Ultimately, one group that I talked to, their response to me was, ‘They received’t allow us to do this.’ So lastly I simply mentioned, properly, who’s ‘they’? Give me ‘they’s’ telephone quantity. From there, I talked to who I’d been referred to, and he was like, oh yeah, that is silly straightforward, why haven’t we achieved this already? And he confirmed me the primary instance of what I’d been asking for, about 5 minutes after I defined the concept.”

It could have solely required what amounted to a small repair for the change to lastly occur. But, the outcome has been a vital leap ahead in how Pine can use GCSS-MC to trace AM {hardware} and 3D printed elements:

“I can’t digitally ship work to the printer but, however I can digitally ship the job to the fellows operating the printer, and so they can do the work from there,” mentioned Pine. “That’s an enormous step. I may observe half manufacturing right down to the serial variety of the printer, and hint that every one the way in which again to the top merchandise that the part was produced for.

“Let’s say, then, that six months from now, that half breaks. I can simply search the database to seek out out which printer the half got here from, and pull up the digital information used to create the half. That permits me to make use of the identical supply and supplies used to print the half within the first place — all of the legwork I would want as a way to do the backend lifecycle sustainment of the elements that we print will already be there.”

Face protect body being 3D printed throughout the peak of COVID on MCAS Futenma, Okinawa. Picture courtesy of Lance Corporal Ethan M. Leblanc, through DVIDS.

One reassuring angle to Pine’s profile as an implementer of recent applied sciences is that he’s comparatively new to all this. Whereas he usually leaves you with the impression that he was born fluent in G-code, he in reality turned accustomed to 3D printing barely over 5 years in the past:

”I went by a course in Okinawa in 2019, after which clearly COVID occurred. The course was known as Innovation Bootcamp, by an organization known as Constructing Momentum. It was like a firehose of programming, robotics, and 3D printing. The 3D printing half hooked me, as a result of I’m an optics man by commerce — night-vision, thermals, artillery, the whole lot associated to that, is what I do.

“Such a big proportion of the gear that we use in that tactical space is sole supply to provide. Which means, if I can’t get the half from that one producer, then I simply can’t get the half. And once I was first getting familiarized with AM, that’s once we had been actually beginning to expertise that, for lots of the legacy programs, we couldn’t get elements. So I noticed the worth instantly.

“Then, nonetheless throughout COVID, my rest room lid broke. I wasn’t allowed to go away the home, so I simply printed the little hinge pin that I wanted. And from then on I used to be like, yeah, that is it! I modeled it, printed it by myself, and I assumed it was the best factor ever. Granted, I by no means thought it will get me to the place I’m proper now.”

Matt Pine. Picture courtesy of Matt Pine

And that’s what’s reassuring about his trajectory. Nonetheless, many service members had been studying about AM on the time Pine began discovering it; there are a lot of extra studying about it now, and much more will likely be skilled within the needed abilities within the years forward. Inside a few years of studying the commerce, Pine was educating others to do it. Not lengthy after that, he was getting the questions answered that ought to make actual lasting change on the bottom, when it comes to how the U.S. navy implements AM as a sustainment technique.

He’s proof that this daunting technique of rebuilding U.S. manufacturing capability can work, in the one approach that’s actually possible: by one individual at a time studying a brand new talent. In response to Pine, that’s precisely the place everybody who cares about addressing this problem ought to be turning their consideration in direction of:

“We now have the identical actual issues as basic business,” Pine asserted. “We love the concept of certifications, so we’re doing all this work on certifying processes and supplies, however on the similar time, we’re not placing those self same brains in direction of manufacturing. We’re nonetheless targeted on making a component, reducing it up, doing all of the tremendous in-depth materials evaluation, however then we don’t have the manpower that lets us leverage that know-how. It’s just like the cart and the horse are by some means strolling uphill side-by-side, making an attempt to determine how one can get to their vacation spot on the similar time.

“It’s troublesome forecasting what number of employees we’re going to want, as a result of the way in which provide chains work is, we don’t have the availability drawback till exactly the second that we do. So making an attempt to remove from all the necessities that we have already got, as a way to prepare for one thing that’s presently a ‘perhaps’, isn’t one thing that anybody is superb at.

“Within the DoD, I do assume we’re getting higher at it. There’s actually much more deal with it, and much more willingness to drive the required modifications, however I feel we have to be extra aggressive. I went to a panel in February at MilAM, and the ultimate query I used to be requested was one thing like, ‘Do you could have any basic suggestions?’

“My response was, yeah, transfer sooner! We have to transfer sooner in certification of the employees wanted to run the machines. We have to transfer sooner in elements growth. We have to transfer sooner in modeling each space of the availability chain that we’re making an attempt to the touch. We simply want to maneuver sooner.”

The method could by no means transfer shortly sufficient to fulfill Pine. However each huge mobilizing effort wants folks like that. Happily, for the challenge to reindustrialize America, an increasing number of folks appear to be pondering like Matt Pine day by day.