Alpine Advanced Materials, a leading expert in the design and manufacturing of custom-engineered parts for the world’s most demanding aerospace, defense, energy, space, and transportation applications, sought to overcome the challenges associated with traditional metal parts. For Alpine Advanced Materials, the conventional injection molding approach required significant upfront investment in permanent steel tooling, hindering the ability to rapidly produce prototype parts for testing and validation in key high-performance materials like HX5®, a multi-scale reinforced polymer with exceptional performance over a wide range of temperatures and extreme environmental conditions. Additionally, standard 3D printing had proven too costly and it couldn’t withstand the high molding temperatures of their composite polymers.