The center’s cutting-edge technology provides a new capability for naval sustainment. Cold spray is a solid-state additive manufacturing process using compressed gas to project metal powder at high speeds, restoring components and repairing damage accrued from its lifecycle—such as corrosion—without heat damage from traditional welding.
“The MADMAN Repair Center allows us to shift our focus from ‘replace’ to ‘repair’,” said Capt. Rex Boonyobhas, Commanding Officer at NSWC Crane. “This center is the first organic industrial base facility for non-structural cold spray within the Navy, which enables us to perform crucial repairs in-house that were previously outsourced, develop new organic repairing solutions for components, and collaborate with leading academic and research partners to advance the science of additive manufacturing. This new capability enhances fleet readiness, drives innovation, and solidifies NSWC Crane’s role as a leader in material science and repair technology.”
Prior to this new capability, when aerospace and maritime components were damaged, they were repaired using traditional fusion welding—which may lead to the metal cracking and losing strength. Because cold spray is a solid-state process that does not rely on thermal melting, it completely eliminates heat damage, allowing the restored material to maintain its original structural integrity and strength.
“This is more than an advanced maintenance tool; it is a force multiplier for fleet readiness,” said Dr. Kyle Werner, Deputy Technical Director at NSWC Crane. “Establishing this organic capability allows us to project sustainment directly to the point of need. Integrating full-spectrum cold spray at NSWC Crane fundamentally keeps our ships at sea, our submarines on patrol, and our aircraft in the sky. Broad collaborative strategic partnerships across Office of Naval Research (ONR), NAVSEA 05, Baylor University, Penn State Applied Research Lab (ARL), and Defense Industry Base (DIB) providers made this capability possible which will ensure the warfighter has continuous access to reliable, combat-ready platforms, keeping them in the fight without delay.”
The MADMAN Repair Center uses both low and high pressure to provide a full spectrum of repair capabilities, tailoring the repair of each component to the specific mission requirement. The low-pressure systems are agile and portable, allowing NSWC Crane technical experts to project repair capabilities in the fleet. These capabilities can be deployed into expeditionary environments to execute repairs on board ships, bypassing the crippling downtime of tearing a system apart. Meanwhile, the high-pressure systems restore structural integrity and provide depot-level restoration. MADMAN meets the Navy’s growing demand for solid-state additive repairs and enables rapid restoration of critical assets that are difficult to repair, hard to procure, or subject to long-lead times.
