DEEP has completed installation of Vanguard, its pilot subsea human habitat, on the seafloor at Tennessee Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Vanguard was produced from steel using traditional manufacturing methods approved by DNV, combining fabrication (forming, cutting), machining, and manual welding, following a complex marine operation that anchored the system to the ocean floor.
Deployment at Tennessee Reef
The complete system now rests on the sandy seafloor at 17 meters (56 ft) of depth. The habitat’s liveable section measures 10.7 meters (35 ft) long by 2.5 meters (8 ft) wide and is designed to support crews of up to four aquanauts for research missions of five days or longer. Installation involved placing an ocean floor foundation, fixing the habitat to it, and tethering a surface support buoy nearby. DEEP’s partners on the Vanguard project include Unique Group, Bastion Technologies, Triton Submarines, and Resolve Marine.
Sea acceptance testing and commissioning are now underway as the final steps toward DNV classification. DNV has been engaged throughout the design and build process, providing independent technical assurance that Vanguard meets engineering standards. DEEP says it will then move to crew training ahead of Vanguard’s first research missions.
Norman Smith, Chief Technology Officer at DEEP, said, “Installing Vanguard at Tennessee Reef was a carefully choreographed marine operation with a lot of moving parts, and the culmination of 18 months of intense design, build, and testing efforts.”
DEEP launched in 2021 in the UK, and its manufacturing division, DEEP Manufacturing, has since built up one of the largest Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) capabilities in the industry. At the time DEEP Manufacturing launched, the company said no traditional manufacturing process could meet its requirements for large, customized metal parts, and that WAAM offered the scale and speed it needed. Notably, the Vanguard installation does not make use of this AM capability. Asked why additive manufacturing (AM) wasn’t used for the build, DEEP told 3D Printing Industry (3DPI) “Vanguard is our pilot subsea human habitat. We used traditional manufacturing methods that have been tried and tested by past habitats. More innovative designs will likely be used for our future, larger, deeper habitats.”
Next steps
Vanguard is the first phase of a longer-term program, providing the real-world experience that informs what comes next: Sentinel, a larger, modular habitat system now in its final design stages, with more details expected later this year. DEEP said its final design will differ from the early concepts shown on the company’s website. The company told 3DPI that, as with Vanguard, Sentinel will not be built using WAAM.
With that pattern confirmed for both habitats, 3DPI asked about possible WAAM involvement in the program, given the tie to DEEP Manufacturing. DEEP confirmed that DEEP Manufacturing did build a fully WAAM’d pressure vessel for human occupancy to support the Vanguard program.
According to the company, the WAAM produced vessel is rated to withstand pressures up to 200 meters depth under the DNV standard for pressure vessels, and was originally designed as a recovery module for DEEP’s habitats.
The pressure vessel, DEEP said, may serve as an emergency recovery module for habitats beyond Vanguard and Sentinel, the same category of later-stage projects DEEP flagged for more innovative manufacturing.
DEEP Manufacturing’s WAAM program
That announced pressure vessel sits on a broader WAAM track record DEEP Manufacturing has built up over the past year. In October 2025, it received full DNV Approval of Manufacture for WAAM production of pressure vessels, hull structures, and equipment. That was followed by a Houston facility expansion in March 2026, and in June 2026 the company partnered with Fortius Metals to develop production-scale multi-material WAAM.
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