Case Study: Top Flight Aerostructures reduces tooling cost and lead time with Markforged

3D Printed Aircraft Bracket Forming Tool

Top Flight Aerostructures, an aerospace engineering and manufacturing firm supporting U.S. military aviation, faced high tooling costs on small-quantity orders where skilled labor and CNC bandwidth made tooling a large portion of total costs. To reduce lead time and cost they adopted Markforged continuous fiber 3D printing, purchasing a Mark Two.

Using the Markforged Mark Two and Eiger software, Top Flight quickly modeled a forming tool in SolidWorks 2019 and printed it in Onyx reinforced with continuous fiberglass to form an edge support bracket for a C-5M Galaxy in a 100‑ton press. The Markforged solution matched the performance of a CNC tool while bypassing CNC setup and programming, delivering the required strength at a fraction of the cost, labor, and machine bandwidth and enabling faster, more competitive small-batch production.

Top Flight Aerostructures

Greg Kress

Vice President