Metinvest Mining and Metallurgical Group has handed over three 3D printers to the National Guard of Ukraine as part of Rinat Akhmetov’s Steel Front military initiative.
According to a press release, the important batch of aid was handed over to the NGU servicemen: three 3D printers and 18 kilograms of special plastic for printing components.
“Printing components on such printers is now a very popular technology among the military. It was not easy to find the equipment, it took us about 1.5 months. However, the 3D printers have been purchased and our defenders are already using them in their own workshops,” said Alexander Mironenko, Chief Operating Officer of Metinvest Group, as quoted by the press service.
According to Andriy Belyaev, commander of the 23rd Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, the 3D printers will be used to quickly print and replace some spare parts that can only be produced with such modern equipment.
“First of all, it will be used for automotive equipment. It will also be used to repair reconnaissance drones used to protect critical state facilities within the area of responsibility of the National Guard of Ukraine,” said Belyaev.
“Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of steel and mining companies. The group’s enterprises are located mainly in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk regions. The main shareholders of the holding are SCM Group (71.24%) and Smart Holding (23.76%), which jointly manage it. Metinvest Holding LLC is the management company of Metinvest Group.
Ukraine has received industrial-grade 3D printers from the United States that can print spare parts for equipment on the battlefield, said William LaPlante, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.
“Finally, last month we delivered these industrial 3D printers to Ukraine, and last week they completed their training on how to use this printer. (…) This is a truck-sized printer that the Ukrainians have completed their training on, and they can print all their parts on it,” the official said during a speech at the Center for a New American Security, Voice of America reports.
According to him, the emergence of these printers speeds up the process of repairing military equipment and opens up new opportunities.
“You can do great things with 3D printing, not just because of the speed. You can actually produce parts that you couldn’t produce under normal conditions,” LaPlante said.
He also clarified that after the Russian invasion began, Ukrainians began to print 3D parts on their own. LaPlante hinted that Ukraine did not have the appropriate permits to do so, but allied countries helped in this situation.
“In the beginning, Ukrainians were printing their own 3D parts without having any technical data packages. You know what they say, when your country is under an existential attack, intellectual property laws only matter a little bit,” the official joked.
“So we’ve cleaned it up, along with other countries. Now they have all the technical data packages,” LaPlante emphasized.
