Scaling Industrial Metal Additive Manufacturing Production

Precision Resource and 3D Systems have expanded their technical partnership with the groundbreaking of two metal additive manufacturing facilities in Huntington Beach, California, and Shelton, Connecticut. Scheduled to become operational in the first quarter of 2027, the facilities establish an integrated, bi-coastal manufacturing network delivering end-to-end component production for aerospace, defense, automotive, heavy-duty, and medical device sectors.

Operational Bottlenecks in Additive Component Finishing
Commercial and defense manufacturing programs face persistent supply chain friction when transitioning raw additive prints into flight-ready or production-grade components. Fragmented workflows—where printing, thermal processing, and computer numerical control machining occur at disconnected vendor sites—introduce logistics delays, quality control risks, and dimensional variances. To eliminate external transit intervals and maintain tight geometric tolerances, manufacturing networks require a vertically integrated production line that co-locates raw powder fusion with downstream metallurgical conditioning and high-precision subtraction.

System Architecture and Additive Fleet Integration
The production footprint standardizes on 3D Systems' DMP Flex 350 Triple metal printing platforms. The system utilizes a multi-laser optical engine designed for high-throughput powder bed fusion, achieving uniform thermal dissipation across the build chamber to ensure microstructure consistency and part repeatability.

At the equipment level, Precision Resource integrates the DMP Flex 350 Triple units alongside its existing DMP 350 fleet, establishing unified machine interfaces, standardized parameter sets, and centralized powder-handling protocols. To close the processing chain within a single facility envelope, Precision Resource incorporates in-house vacuum heat treatment systems and multi-axis complex machining skids. Synchronizing thermal stress-relief profiling with post-print five-axis milling directly addresses mechanical ductility requirements, removes internal stresses from thermal gradients, and achieves strict surface finish specifications without secondary vendor transfers.

Facility Footprint and Phased Deployment
The infrastructure investment establishes production hubs on both American coasts:

In Huntington Beach, California, the facility breaks ground as Precision Resource's second additive site in the region, effectively doubling existing regional metal printing capacity.

In Shelton, Connecticut, the development represents Precision Resource’s first dedicated additive manufacturing location, establishing an East Coast production anchor engineered for modular physical expansion as program volumes scale.

Chris Gratton, Director of Additive and Machine Operations at Precision Resource, detailed the operational rationale: "Together, these operations give our customers greater capacity, flexibility, and a faster path from print to finished component. They also allow us to reduce supply-chain complexity, provide greater manufacturing and geographic redundancy, and take on increasingly demanding production programs with the speed, quality and reliability our customers require."

Industrial Supply Chain Redundancy and Impact
Connecting dual facilities under standardized laser powder bed platforms establishes geographic redundancy and mitigates regional disruption risks for mission-critical defense and aerospace programs. By coupling additive laser processing with internal metallurgical conditioning and precision machining, the network shortens turnaround lead times, standardizes part qualification, and accelerates series manufacturing of complex metal components.

Edited by Romila DSilva, Induportals Editor, with AI assistance.