Plyform Composites s.r.l Improves Aerospace Production Standards with 3D Printing Technology.

Speed and quality go hand in hand

Plyform s.r.l, located in Valla Lopombia, Italy, is a specialist in the manufacture of parts for industrial applications using advanced composite materials. The company is involved in a wide range of industrial sectors, with particular expertise in the aerospace sector. In fact, Plyform is one of Italy's leading suppliers of structural components for aircraft, and is renowned for manufacturing high quality, complex composite structural components.

In order to continually improve its ability to respond to customers, Plyform needed a production solution that would reduce time and costs while allowing Plyform to remain innovative. “For traditional composite production, the biggest challenges are shortening lead times, reducing costs, and the quality of the final composite part,” explains Luca Ceriani, Plyform's Director of Manufacturing Engineering.

To achieve their goals, Plyform researched a variety of industrial-grade additive manufacturing solutions and realized the benefits that industrial-grade 3D printing could bring them. The company chose Stratasys' F900™ 3D printer, based on FDM® technology. the F900 allows Plyform to produce a wide range of high-quality carbon fiber parts for helicopters using 3D-printed composite molds, at significantly higher speeds and at a significantly lower cost than aluminum molds. These advantages were demonstrated in the production of the pilot's cyclic joystick (also known as the “stick”), where the company printed a mold using the high-performance soluble material ST-1303D, wrapped the carbon fiber composite material around the mold, and then, after curing, washed off the internal dissolvable vanishing mold to leave the final composite part.

“If we had used a traditional process to produce a composite mold for a helicopter pilot's joystick, it would have taken us four hours to mill the mold and another four hours to do the external processing to avoid resin contamination,” Ceriani said. With the Stratasys FDM 3D printer, we were able to 3D print a mold in 2.5 hours while reducing costs by 80 percent. In addition, the technology has improved part quality by about 30 percent. It's revolutionized our business model.”

With this technology, the traditional tooling process is no longer necessary, and we can 3D print lightweight parts to customer specifications at a much lower cost.

“We can 3D print a mold in 2.5 hours while reducing the cost by 80%. In addition, this technology has improved part quality by about 30%. This has revolutionized our business model.”