When Leonardo sought a rapid, cost-efficient replacement for legacy rotor-blade restraint cradles on Royal Navy AW101 maritime helicopters, it turned to SFM Technology’s AeroAdditive team. Working on an accelerated schedule, SFM printed each cradle as two monolithic halves on a BigRep PRO industrial FFF 3D printer system, whose enclosed nearly 1 m³ build volume easily accommodated the full-scale part (900 × 230 × 160 mm).

Printed in BigRep HI-TEMP CF material, a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer, the cradles deliver the strength, thermal stability, and salt-spray resistance while reducing weight compared with the original metal fixture. Post-processing consists only of support removal, light sanding, and the insertion of bushings and threaded helicoils before final paint, minimizing downstream labor.
Key Takeaways:
The success of this project underscores how large-format additive manufacturing can:

• Compress lead times from weeks to days for oversize, low-volume fixtures and ground-support equipment.
• Maintain strict aerospace QA through repeatable, CNC-grade motion control and automated calibration on the BigRep PRO.
• Enable batch production of flight-critical hardware at the point of need, strengthening supply-chain resilience.

LEARN MORE