Case Study: US Naval Undersea Warfare Center cuts costs, improves quality and shortens lead time with ExOne additive manufacturing

Cut Costs, Improve Quality & Shorten Lead Time on Production

The US Naval Undersea Warfare Center needed a fast, cost-effective way to replace MK 30 anti‑submarine mobile‑target tail cones. They turned to ExOne and its additive manufacturing capability—specifically ExOne’s patternless sand printing/digital part materialization—to produce complex sand molds and cores directly from CAD data.

ExOne converted the provided drawings to CAD, printed the mold package in 12 days, and delivered completed aluminum castings in about four weeks. The ExOne sand‑printing approach met rigorous inspection requirements, reduced unit cost to $12,600 (versus $20,000 with traditional tooling), and shortened lead times (traditional 25 weeks vs an ExOne process benchmark of 10 weeks), enabling the US Naval Undersea Warfare Center to cut costs, improve quality and accelerate production.

US Naval Undersea Warfare Center