Everything you always wanted in a buoy…and less.
The Navy is utilizing additive manufacturing technology to adapt emerging designs in transducer and battery technologies into miniaturized sonobuoy components. Using FDM and SLS technologies, these components will leverage fabrication advantages of high-performance additive manufacturing (AM) processes and materials. The ability to construct minibuoy containers aboard ships using mature AM capabilities reduces logistics requirements where storage capacity is limited. A one year transition phase is proposed for the development, testing and integration of the AM version of the internal components and modular container.