Italian aerospace tooling specialist Eligio Re Fraschini partnered with robotic additive manufacturing company Caracol on a co-funded pilot project to test whether wire arc additive manufacturing could viably replace conventional methods for complex aerospace tooling components.
The target was a spar tool used in carbon fiber lamination processes, a component defined by tight tolerances, complex geometry, and demanding structural requirements. Rather than a purely experimental exercise, the project was designed from the outset with scalability in mind, validating a manufacturing approach intended to carry forward into active production programs at larger formats.
What Conventional Manufacturing Gets Wrong
Aerospace tooling has long been constrained by the same set of tradeoffs: high material waste from subtractive machining, long lead times tied to dedicated tooling setups, and limited flexibility when design changes arise mid-development. Casting offers an alternative but introduces its own delays and quality risks. For a sector where tooling precision directly determines part quality, these are not minor inefficiencies, they compound across entire production schedules.
Caracol’s Vipra XP platform, a CMT-based WAAM system, addressed these constraints through direct near-net-shape deposition of 316L stainless steel. By eliminating the need for dedicated mold tooling and reducing the gap between raw material and finished geometry, the process simplified the manufacturing workflow considerably. The system deposited material at 3.7 kg/h, producing a 110kg component measuring 1,000 × 550 × 85 mm in 30 hours of print time, followed by CNC finish machining.
The pilot delivered on its core objectives. Material waste dropped through the near-net-shape approach, and production time was cut substantially against conventional baselines. A key result was a 50% reduction in tool weight compared to an equivalent part made through traditional manufacturing, a performance gain for aerospace applications where handling, thermal cycling, and autoclave loading all factor into tooling decisions.
WAAM in Aerospace Tooling: A Pattern Taking Shape
The Eligio Re Fraschini project sits within a deliberate push by Caracol to establish additive manufacturing as a credible alternative for aerospace tooling, not just structural components. The company is building a body of evidence across both metal and polymer platforms. In a parallel project, Caracol partnered with Formes et Volumes to produce a large-scale composite lamination tool for aerospace using robotic large-format additive manufacturing with fiber-reinforced thermoplastics, a fully monolithic structure measuring 2,200 × 2,200 × 600 mm, printed in approximately 19 hours, cutting lead times by 50% and production costs by 30% against conventional tooling approaches. The workflow in both cases follows the same logic: additive deposition establishes the near-net geometry, CNC machining brings it to final tolerance, and the part enters an active production environment.
The broader industry is moving in the same direction. WAAM3D demonstrated metal tooling applications on its MiniWAAM platform, including an aerospace frame and a titanium cone section in Ti-6Al-4V, with the latter achieving 95% cost savings and 40% material reduction versus conventional methods. Across both cases, the argument is the same: tooling has historically been one of the most time-consuming and least flexible stage of aerospace production, and additive manufacturing addresses that directly by removing dedicated mold dependencies and compressing development cycles.
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Featured image shows Caracol AM Tooling for Aerospace. Photo via Caracol.
