Home - Haddy 3D prints the TF-179 drone boat, an uncrewed vessel Defense Haddy 3D prints the TF-179 drone boat, an uncrewed vessel Paloma Duran 2 weeks ago 0 Digital manufacturing company Haddy has produced an uncrewed vessel designated the TF-179 Drone Boat using large-format robotic additive manufacturing. The company did not name the customer, disclose the mission profile, or publish length, displacement, propulsion or material data for the boat. That omission leaves the TF-179 itself difficult to assess on its own terms. What can be assessed is the production system behind it, which Haddy has been documenting in public for the better part of a year, and which now represents one of the more concrete examples of additive manufacturing displacing mold-based construction in defense maritime work. “The maritime industry is redefining how vessels are designed and manufactured. The TF-179 Drone Boat is part of that evolution,” the company said in its statement , adding that “the ability to rapidly produce, evaluate, and refine complex systems is becoming an increasingly important advantage.” Haddy has produced an uncrewed vessel designated the TF-179 Drone Boat. Photo via Haddy. Eight robots, seven of them on rails Haddy works out of a 32,000-square-foot microfactory in downtown St. Petersburg running eight Flexbot systems supplied and installed by manufacturer CEAD , which built out the facility in collaboration with Siemens . The Flexbots are hybrid cells, additive and subtractive in one envelope, with CNC post-processing integrated into the same workflow and Siemens Sinumerik control underneath. Seven run on rails, and that is the detail that makes hulls possible. CEAD prints laterally against a vertical bed as the arm travels its track, which as co-founder Maarten Logtenberg explained to 3D Printing Industry leaves part length constrained only by the rail, he put 40-meter printed boats within reach of the approach. A track record measured in days The TF-179 is not Haddy’s first uncrewed vessel, and the shift into defense is recent. The company built its business on furniture, architectural elements and casting molds before turning the same robotic cells toward hulls over the past year. HavocAI announced in March that its Harbinger, a 40-foot semi-submersible autonomous low-profile vessel built for contested logistics and resupply, had completed its maiden full-power voyage, designed, built, integrated and on the water in under 30 days. The hull was printed and delivered in nine days, with integration taking under a week after that. HavocAI credited Haddy’s large-format additive manufacturing with producing the vessel at speed, and CEAD with supplying printers capable of a hull at that scale.