Gap-year sailor excels in 3D

An eight-week posting to Navy’s Centre for Innovation to finish off Seaman Elmarie Faurie’s Gap Year program has led to an ongoing benefit to Navy.

CAPTION: Seaman Elmarie Faurie in the Navy’ Centre for Innovation, Sydney, with her 3D-printed torch clip. Photo by Able Seaman Lucinda Allanson.

Seaman Faurie followed her brother Rico into the Navy and has experienced much of what Navy life has to offer.

She has undertaken operational deployments and exercises at sea, major ceremonial events ashore, spent a week with the physical training instructors and played various characters as an extra in special forces exercises.

Describing her time with the Fleet Support Unit as “bloody awesome”, she pulled apart and fixed mechanical equipment, which inspired her to commit beyond the initial gap year.

Her technical aptitude shone during her time at the Centre for Innovation, when an idea for a torch clip for Navy’s diver community came through the Centre’s Innovation Portal.

The training Seaman Faurie received at the centre allowed her to design the solution and deliver the torch clip through 3D printing.

“I had never designed or 3D-printed anything before so it was pretty rewarding to develop an idea that came from another sailor out in the fleet, which can now be delivered to the dive community across the fleet,” Seaman Faurie said.

According to the director of the centre, Commander Peter Teichmann, Seaman Faurie’s project was a good case study of the centre’s capability.

“Sailors identifying problems and then receiving the tools and training to deliver solutions faster than a normal procurement process shows that our sailors are key to getting after the sustainability, availability and lethality effects required of Navy,” Commander Teichmann said.

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