From Boating Season Wait Times to Two-Week Turnarounds
Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Industrial Technology & Platforms (ATP) group has helped Sharrow Marine compress propeller manufacturing timelines from 130 days to roughly two weeks. Sharrow’s patented propeller, introduced in 2020, delivers lower noise, reduced vibration, and improved efficiency, but the company struggled to scale production fast enough to meet growing demand from recreational, commercial, and government users. Traditional lost-wax and ceramic slip casting created long lead times and limited throughput, effectively turning every order into a full boating season wait. Through the Michigan Central innovation hub, Ford and Sharrow were introduced and began collaborating on a new manufacturing route. Less than seven minutes into the first discussion, Ford’s team identified sand casting 3D printing as a way to eliminate key bottlenecks. The result is a 9x speed improvement that turns a critical constraint into a competitive advantage for both partners.
How Binder Jet 3D Printing Reinvents Sand Casting
At the core of the partnership is binder jet 3D printing, used to create highly precise sand molds for casting Sharrow’s complex propeller geometries. Ford leverages systems such as the ExOne S-Max and X series with Furan sand to build molds layer by layer, selectively binding sand where needed instead of machining or tooling physical patterns. This approach replaces older lost-wax and slip casting methods that demanded extensive tooling, pattern making, and manual finishing. The digitally driven workflow allows Sharrow’s intricate blade designs to be translated directly into mold geometry with tight tolerances, while regional foundries contribute metallurgical and pouring expertise. Because molds can be printed on demand, there is no need to store or iterate expensive tooling, and design updates can be implemented quickly. For 3D printed propellers, this combination of digital design and sand casting 3D printing dramatically accelerates iteration and production without sacrificing casting quality.
Michigan Central’s Role in Scaling Industrial Additive Manufacturing
The Ford–Sharrow collaboration also highlights the strategic value of innovation ecosystems like Michigan Central. Acting as a mobility innovation hub, Michigan Central brokered the introduction between Ford’s ATP group and Sharrow Marine, then supported the partnership with access to prototyping labs and local talent. Sharrow used the site’s Newlab facilities to validate early concepts, while Ford’s advanced manufacturing team worked with regional foundries to refine the binder jet sand-casting workflow for volume production. Michigan Central’s leadership describes this as a textbook case of moving from breakthrough idea to real-world scale: a high-performance marine product meets an industrial-grade additive manufacturing production process. For Sharrow, the ecosystem has enabled rapid team growth, production ramp-up, and expansion planning into new applications. For Ford, it demonstrates how existing additive expertise can be commercialized beyond automotive, building capacity and utilization for its 3D printing assets.
From Prototypes to Production in Marine Manufacturing
Ford has spent more than two decades developing expertise in 3D sand casting, using binder jet 3D printing to produce engine blocks, jigs, fixtures, and even end-use parts on niche vehicles. The Sharrow project marks a notable shift: a move beyond prototyping into repeatable, production-grade marine manufacturing of high-value components. Sharrow offers multiple versions of its propeller and anticipates creating more variants tailored to different vessels now that lead times have been dramatically reduced. The digitally driven process makes it practical to support a larger catalog of designs without ballooning tooling costs or schedules. This is a concrete example of additive manufacturing production in action, where 3D printing is not the final material but the enabler of a more agile casting workflow. It shows how established foundry practices can be modernized rather than replaced, pairing conventional metallurgy with disruptive digital fabrication.
Compressing Supply Chains for Specialized Industrial Parts
Reducing propeller lead times from 130 days to about 14 days has broad implications for industrial supply chains. Specialized components like Sharrow’s 3D printed propellers typically rely on low-volume, high-skill casting routes that are slow to scale and vulnerable to bottlenecks. By using binder jet 3D printing to generate molds on demand, Ford and Sharrow have effectively decoupled design and casting capacity from traditional tooling constraints. This shortens planning cycles, cuts inventory risk, and allows manufacturers to respond quickly to demand spikes or design improvements. Sharrow also sees potential for its propeller technology in drones, fans, and pumps, suggesting that similar sand casting 3D printing workflows could accelerate other niche applications. For manufacturers, the collaboration signals a path toward more responsive, digitally orchestrated production networks, where additive-enabled casting becomes a strategic lever for speed and flexibility rather than a niche prototyping tool.