A Ship Can Wait Months for One Metal Part. Radian Forge Wants to Make It in Days.
A ship can be tied to a pier waiting for a piece of metal someone could hold in one hand. Jeff Yeager saw it happen often enough during his career around ships and the people who maintain them that he decided to build a company around the wait. “The part was never the difficult thing,” he said. “The wait was.”
At Radian Forge’s Portsmouth shop, a robot lays down weld bead after weld bead until the metal takes the shape of a part. Machinists then finish it to the required dimensions. The process is called wire arc additive manufacturing. Yeager’s explanation is simpler. “We print metal parts.”
The company focuses on components for the Navy, shipyards and the businesses that support them, particularly parts that take months to source or have lost their suppliers altogether.
Yeager points to an eye bolt that sheared and took a ladder out of service. Replacing it through the usual supply system would have taken months, he said. Radian Forge scanned the part, modeled it, printed it and had a replacement in hand within days. The company did the work at no charge to see how quickly it could solve the problem.
At the time of the interview, a valve component for a Navy shipyard was undergoing final machining in the Portsmouth shop. Its original pattern is obsolete, Yeager said, and a maintenance schedule was waiting on the part.
Producing a replacement is only part of the challenge. Before a printed component can be used in a Navy application, a technical authority must accept it. That requires testing, a quality system and records that show exactly how the part was made. “Printing a part and getting a Navy technical authority to accept a printed part are two completely different problems,” Yeager said.
Radian Forge has delivered parts to a Navy shipyard, a regional water utility and commercial marine customers. It is also quoting larger structural work for shipbuilders. Yeager said the company has been building toward the Navy’s performance specification for copper nickel made through this process, which he described as a defined path toward acceptance for the material.
Now it has more capital to pursue that work. Veteran Ventures Capital led a $2.5 million seed round announced in September, with participation from the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation and existing investors. Yeager said the money will support more machines, more people on the production floor and the material qualification work needed for customers to buy parts without seeking an exception each time.
Portsmouth puts the company close to the people it serves. Radian Forge operates inside Fairlead on the Elizabeth River. Yeager said four shipyards, the fleet and much of the repair supply chain are within an hour, allowing the company to deliver a finished part to a pier the same day.
Over the next year, he expects more qualified materials, a larger footprint on Lincoln Street and a production cell that can travel to the work. His measure of progress is shorter. “Fewer ships sitting still.”
