Stockwell Elastomerics, a Philadelphia-based silicone manufacturer, has incorporated silicone 3D printing into its operations through Lynxter’s S300X platform, cutting prototype validation timelines from weeks to days and eliminating the material compromises that have long limited additive manufacturing in elastomers.
A Century-Old Manufacturer Adds an Additive Layer
Stockwell Elastomerics has spent more than 100 years in the business of molding and converting silicone for demanding industries. The company’s core challenge was familiar to any manufacturer that serves clients with tight tolerances and high stakes: getting functional parts into customers’ hands fast enough to support real design decisions, before committing to the cost and lead time of production tooling.
To close that gap, Stockwell integrated the S300X – LIQ21 | LIQ11 from Lynxter, a French manufacturer focused on liquid elastomer printing since its founding in 2016. The system prints with actual silicone rather than substitute compounds, handling the material’s processing requirements directly.
The distinction matters. Silicone’s chemical sensitivity and mechanical behavior make it resistant to conventional printing approaches. Most resin-based alternatives, SLA and DLP among them, rely on materials that cannot reproduce actual silicone’s elasticity, and degrade over time under industrial conditions. Stockwell’s adoption of the Lynxter platform allows the company to print with the same LSR formulations used in its Liquid Injection Molding machines, from 5 to 70 Shore A hardness, with no material substitution at any stage.
From Weeks to Days: What the Timeline Change Actually Means
The most direct operational outcome of the integration is speed. Stockwell can now deliver multiple prototype iterations within a single week, a cycle that previously took longer due to tooling lead times. Customer validation timelines have been reduced by a factor of six.
That speed translates into a qualitatively different kind of customer conversation. Before production molds are machined, a client can receive a part that performs like the final product, one they can compress, assemble, and use to verify sealing behavior. This early functional evaluation serves as a design checkpoint: if a printed part is approved, the design is locked and tooling can proceed with confidence, reducing the risk of costly revisions after the mold has already been cut.
The MEX (material extrusion) process underpinning Lynxter’s system is what makes this possible. Layer-by-layer deposition of real liquid silicone preserves the mechanical properties that functional testing requires, compression set, elongation, and sealing behavior among them. These are measurements that resin prototypes cannot replicate, which historically forced manufacturers to wait for molded samples before any meaningful validation could occur.
For Stockwell, this capability also creates a strategic opening earlier in the customer relationship. By delivering functional parts before supplier selection is finalized, the company can support design teams through the validation phase and build trust before a formal commitment has been made.
Silicone 3D Printing Moves From Workaround to Production Tool
Stockwell’s integration addresses a specific commercial gap in aerospace, medical, transportation, and defense manufacturing, where tooling costs and lead times make early functional validation with production-grade material commercially critical. Others in the same sectors are working toward the same outcome from different angles.
The core problem Stockwell is solving is not isolated to one manufacturer. 3Deus Dynamics, which develops silicone parts, obtained EN 9100 certification in early 2026, positioning its silicone additive manufacturing capability directly within aerospace and defense supply chains where certification is a prerequisite for participation.
Filament2 approached the access problem from the hardware side, unveiling what it described as the world’s first silicone filament compatible with standard FDM 3D printers at Formnext 2024, targeting automotive manufacturers producing flexible gaskets and seals in-house, and industrial prototypers looking to close the gap between initial design and full-scale manufacturing without tooling investment.
Both cases reflect the same commercial logic Stockwell is acting on: in industries where silicone parts must meet functional tolerances before tooling is cut, the ability to print with the actual production material is what determines whether additive manufacturing earns a place in the validation workflow at all.
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Featured image shows S300X – LIQ21 | LIQ11 at Stockwell Elastomerics. Photo via Lynxter.
