When I first heard “D-J Engineering,” my mind drifted to a music festival spinning tracks, yet it is an aerospace and defense manufacturer who produces stretch form blocks, mill fixtures, and other production tooling using large scale additive manufacturing (LSAM).
Relying on LSAM is quite recent for the company that has spent the past three decades producing aerospace tooling and the shift is significant, as LSAM enabled the companies to reduce lead times from months to weeks.
According to the company, the tooling step itself was often the constraint. For example, a traditional welded stretch form block required four to a dozen individual components, each planned, programmed, machined, fabricated, welded, assembled, and then match machined again. Mill fixtures were built by gluing up sheets of MDF or compressed plywood and milling them.
Before selecting LSAM from Thermwood, the team assessed metal AM systems. The LSAM offered what metal additive systems couldn’t quite deliver for D-J’s economics: acceptable cycle times, a print volume that mattered, U.S. manufacturing, comprehensive training, and Thermwood’s track record of customer support.
Read more in the latest edition of 3D ADEPT Mag: How do you qualify large-format AM parts in industrial environments? The case of LSAM.
After the first tool rolled off the machine. The printed parts held up. D-J reports running repeat parts off the same tools with minimal degradation, a critical validation for a supplier nervous about unproven production methods.
Tyler Hieber, Engineering Manager at D-J, reflected on one complex formed skin assembly the company had previously tooled conventionally: “With the LSAM print capability, we could have made these significantly faster, produced tools in weeks versus months, and expedited the delivery of this project greatly.”
For a company in aerospace and defense, where program schedules are often negotiated to the week and tooling delays ripple through supply chains, integrating LSAM removed a bottleneck that was constraining how quickly D-J could respond to customer timelines.
Speaking of Thermwood’s role in the process, Lucy Meadows, D-J’s Tooling Planner, highlighted something that often gets overlooked in equipment purchases: “Working with Thermwood has always been just A-1 customer service. They don’t just make the product. They go out there and they use the product. They know what they’re talking about.”
D-J is already planning to expand LSAM use into composite tooling, including master molds and layup tools. If the initial results hold, this could reshape D-J’s tooling service.
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