WAAM Prints 110kg Mastiff Suspension Carrier in 60 Hours, Halving Lead

Time The Problem With Casting on Low-Volume Defense Programs

Defense vehicle programs rarely hit the volumes that justify conventional tooling. A suspension and differential carrier for a protected vehicle, historically cast or forged, ties you to months of tooling qualification and upfront costs that look absurd when you're building dozens, not thousands. Worse, the geometric rigidity of casting limits what topology optimization can actually deliver. You end up with a part that takes too long to procure, costs too much at low quantity, and isn't as light or strong as the analysis says it could be.

NP Aerospace, working with the Digital Manufacturing Centre, decided to test whether wire arc additive manufacturing could bypass all three constraints at once. The Build

The component was printed on Caracol's Vipra XP system using ER100 wire feedstock. Final dimensions: 540 × 500 × 500 mm. Final mass: 110 kg. Total print time: 60 hours. No tooling. No pattern. No mold.

What makes this worth attention is the geometry. The Mastiff carrier has extreme overhangs and complex organic surfaces that would be extremely difficult, or outright impossible, on conventional fixed-axis deposition systems. Caracol's multi-axis robot-and-part positioning built the entire structure in a single process without redesigning the functional specification or relaxing performance targets.

Post-processing followed standard practice: heat treatment and machining to meet functional and compliance requirements. The result was a lead time reduction of up to 50% against the conventionally manufactured equivalent, with tooling costs eliminated entirely. Why This Matters for Defense Manufacturing

The defense procurement gap is well documented. Spiral development cycles demand faster iteration. Low-volume platforms cannot amortize tooling investment across thousands of units. Yet the performance and compliance bar remains as demanding as any sector in industry.

WAAM is finding its footing in exactly this gap. Nurol Makina and MetalWorm produced an armored vehicle component via WAAM with steel wire feedstock, machined it to final geometry, and ran it through destructive and non-destructive testing before installing it on a vehicle for eight months of operational field trials. Post-test inspections recorded no failures or damage.

DEEP Manufacturing has earned DNV Approval of Manufacture for WAAM production of pressure vessels and hull structures, and is expanding into a Houston facility to bring large-format metal additive closer to energy, defense, and maritime customers.

The Mastiff carrier adds a structurally critical, load-bearing component to that list. When the bottleneck is the tooling cycle, removing it changes the pace of the entire program. The Bottom Line

For defense programs operating at low volume with high structural requirements, WAAM is no longer experimental. It is a viable production route that cuts lead time in half and eliminates tooling cost entirely. The question for procurement teams is no longer whether the technology works. It is whether they can afford to keep waiting for molds that their volumes will never justify.

M4S TAKE

My take: capacity expansions signal confidence, but the real question is whether demand justifies the spend. I watch for follow-up announcements about utilization rates or new contracts. Without those, this is just capital allocation.

Simon McLoughlin