The Trident submarine fleet returns to base after every tour-of-duty for repairs and maintenance. Routinely, as many as 150 of the 1000+ drawer handles are either missing or broken. The OEM is no longer in business and the tooling in missing.

As a member of NCMS, General Pattern was called on by the US Navy to provide a solution. We began by reverse engineering the drawer handle and correcting the design defects. Once corrected, we began producing Direct Manufactured stainless steel alloy replacement parts using the most advanced Direct Metal Sintering process available; with an average of 40 parts a day.

Today General Pattern regularly produces replacement parts using the Laser Sintering (LS) technology without the need for any type of tooling. This low cost solution, coupled with the design improvements, have nearly eliminated field failures and has saved the US Navy tens-of-thousands of dollars.