Greene Tweed has introduced a rapid prototyping process for its Xycomp® DLF™ thermoplastic composite material, enabling aerospace customers to accelerate metal replacement development through faster testing and validation. The new approach cuts prototype lead times by nearly 50%, reducing costs and expanding access to high performance composites in sectors such as Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and Defence.
Xycomp® DLF™ components are engineered to replace metal parts while delivering weight savings, stiffness and strength. Greene Tweed’s proprietary prototyping method optimises tool design and balances machined and net moulded features, ensuring production representative material and part properties. Customers gain quicker access to functional components, lower upfront tooling costs and greater design flexibility before full scale production.
George Rawa, general manager, structural & engineered components at Greene Tweed, said the company developed the process to meet growing demand for lightweight, high performance parts. “This process expedites the timeline to evaluate Xycomp composites in real world applications by putting production quality parts in engineers’ hands in a fraction of the time.”
Key innovations include optimised mould design, parallel part and tool development, rapid in house mould fit ups completed within one to two days, and low cost iterative tooling that supports phased evaluations and design refinement.
The rapid prototyping capability is helping broaden composite adoption across aerospace, AAM, defence, mobile robotics and energy. In AAM, Xycomp® DLF™ components are already being used for lightweight, custom engineered eVTOL applications, with fast design iteration and close collaboration between Greene Tweed engineers and customers accelerating the path from concept to flight ready hardware.
