Reducing Risk in 3D Printed Composite Tooling

For high end composite manufacturing in a rapid development environment, the long lead item is often the hard tooling, in particular the cure mold. A traditional metal mold takes in the neighborhood of four to nine months to design, fabricate and validate. With high temperature capable print materials, and larger and faster printers, Additive Manufacturing (AM) appears to have high potential in this area of advanced composites manufacturing. Sikorsky has used AM very successfully on a scale up to approximately 3'x3' and cure temperatures of 350°F. Though long-term durability is still to be determined; the materials, technologies, and techniques Sikorsky has employed for AM autoclave cure molds on this scale have consistently exceeded expectations. AM tools along the scale of main rotor blades could be leveraged to realize even more significant cost and schedule gains from AM autoclave tooling, and in this area, there are still more questions than answers when it comes to a dependable tooling solution. Rotorcraft development, in particular Future Vertical Lift (FVL), programs offer an opportunity to realize the significant schedule and cost benefits AM can provide for composite tooling.