Autoclave-ready composite layup tools in two weeks instead of months.

The challenge

The customer's composite parts needed layup tools that could go into an autoclave with the carbon fiber laminate. The conventional answer is a machined Invar steel tool, which takes several weeks at best and more often several months, ties up a machine shop, and is heavy enough that moving it around the layup room needs equipment. Each design iteration meant a new tool and another wait. The program also needed drill, assembly, and inspection fixtures on the same short schedule.

Our approach

• Printed layup molds in a high-temperature SLA resin that holds its shape through autoclave cure temperatures, where most additive polymers cannot.
• Used a rigid, glass-filled SLA resin for molds where stiffness and a hard, smooth working surface mattered more than peak temperature.
• Printed drill, assembly, and inspection fixtures in a tough SLA resin that survives shop handling and repeated use.
• Took advantage of the smooth as-printed SLA surface to cut mold finishing time well below what an FDM tool would need before layup.
• Designed each tool alongside the customer's part so revisions could be turned into a new printed tool in the same one to two week window.

The result

Tools now go from design release to the layup room in one to two weeks instead of months, and a single technician can carry a mold that would have needed a lift as Invar. Design changes no longer wait on a machine shop queue, so the customer can iterate the part and the tool together. The same approach now covers our composite layup molds, trim tools, and shop fixtures across programs.