Internationally licensed maintenance, production and development organization Lufthansa Technik has replaced a damage-prone polymer latch on Airbus A330, A340, and A380 roller shutter assemblies with a redesigned titanium version, produced through metal 3D printing by Belgian additive manufacturing company Materialise. The new Ti-6Al-4V latch is manufactured under EN 9100 certification and is now flying on in-service aircraft.
The original latch, an injection-molded polymer component that retains the roller brake and endcap within the shutter assembly, repeatedly failed under in-service wear. Compounding the problem, OEMs would not sell the part as a standalone spare, forcing Lufthansa Technik to replace the entire roller shutter assembly at high costs every time the latch broke.
Rethinking the part for 3D printing
Rather than reproduce the polymer part in metal, Lufthansa Technik’s additive manufacturing team redesigned the component specifically for 3D printing. “The original part was an injection-molded polymer component with a complex geometry,” said David Rudolz, Project Engineer at Lufthansa Technik. “It was immediately identified as an ideal candidate for metal additive manufacturing.”
The redesign accounted for titanium’s different mechanical behavior compared to the original polymer, with engineers adjusting the part’s elastic response, geometry, and wall thickness to preserve function while improving durability. Lufthansa Technik holds EASA Part 21.G and 21.J certifications, allowing it to design, manufacture, and certify flight-ready parts in-house.
Choosing a certified production partner
For manufacturing, Lufthansa Technik turned to Materialise, an established partner selected in part for its EN 9100 certification for metal parts and the capacity of its Metal Competence Center. “Materialise is one of our preferred partners and was our first choice for this project,” Rudolz said.
Materialise underwent a supplier qualification audit before production began, after which the two companies coordinated closely on manufacturing process, process stability requirements, and production controls to meet Lufthansa Technik’s design specifications.
The titanium latch is now flight-ready and in service. Its added strength has extended the component’s expected lifecycle and allows Lufthansa Technik to replace just the latch when damage occurs, cutting maintenance costs and repair time. The project has also led Materialise to be named an official workbench for Lufthansa Technik’s metal parts production.
A track record built since 2015
The project builds on Materialise’s extensive aerospace track record, particularly its long-standing relationship with Airbus. The two companies began working together in 2015, when Materialise started supplying FDM-printed components for the A350 XWB after securing EN9100 and EASA 21G certification. By 2021, that partnership had grown to cover 100 different flight-ready parts for the A350, with roughly 26,000 units installed across the global fleet, and the same year Materialise became qualified to 3D print SLS parts for Airbus using EOS‘s flame-retardant polyamide powder, marking Airbus’s first move into laser sintering for flight-ready components.
Materialise describes this kind of work, cabin components, ducting, brackets, and other MRO parts, as aerospace’s “unsung heroes,” distinct from the “superhero” metal applications like jet engine and gearbox parts that get more attention. The company has 3D printed more than 500,000 aerospace parts across over 4,000 certified components, and has said it is working to expand further into metal additive manufacturing following its EN 9100 certification.
Solving the unsourceable-part problem
The Lufthansa Technik latch project reflects a broader gap in aerospace: parts that OEMs no longer supply or never sold as standalone spares, leaving MRO providers with no path to repair beyond replacing entire assemblies. Metal 3D printing’s ability to produce small, certified batches on demand, without tooling or minimum order quantities, has made it a natural fit for exactly this kind of problem, letting operators keep aging or discontinued components in service.
Airbus subsidiary Satair faced a similar issue with an A320ceo wingtip fence that became unobtainable from its original supplier, which had struggled to keep producing the cast part. Airbus’s RapidSpares team recertified the component in titanium via metal 3D printing, cutting non-recurring costs by 45% and shortening lead times.
More recently, the Fleet Readiness Center East has moved discontinued and hard-to-source aircraft components into its own in-house metal 3D printing certification pipeline, producing flight-certified metal parts and installing them directly on active aircraft to address a persistent parts shortage.
The pattern holds across aviation: when a part goes out of production and no standalone spare exists, reverse-engineered 3D printing has become the practical way to keep aircraft in service without replacing entire assemblies.
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Featured image shows 3D printed titanium latch. Photo via Materialise.
