Lufthansa Technik Turns to 3D-Printed Titanium for an Unsourceable Aircraft Latch

A part with no supply chain

Lufthansa Technik faced a classic aftermarket nightmare: a polymer latch in a roller shutter assembly kept breaking in service, and the original equipment manufacturer would not sell the component separately. Every failure meant swapping the entire assembly, driving costs and downtime for airlines.

The company's additive manufacturing team, working with Premium AEROTEC and Materialise, chose to redesign the latch for metal 3D printing. The new version uses Ti6Al4V titanium produced through Laser Power Bed Fusion, an EN 9100-certified process that builds the part layer by layer without forging dies or molds.

Why titanium and why now

The original polymer latch simply could not survive the operating environment. Temperatures inside the roller shutter assembly can reach 300 degrees Celsius, and repeated cycling fatigued the plastic until it failed. Titanium offered the required heat resistance and strength, but forging a tiny, complex latch in low volumes was uneconomical.

LPBF removed that constraint. Without tooling, Lufthansa Technik could produce replacement latches on demand. The redesign also let engineers optimize the geometry for additive manufacturing rather than copy the original forging.

Flight-ready certification

The real hurdle was approval. Structurally relevant metal parts outside the aircraft cabin require full aviation certification. Lufthansa Technik and Premium AEROTEC qualified the process, material, and inspection methods to EN 9100 standards. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency granted certification for the A-Link component used in the IAE-V2500 engine anti-icing system.

Soeren Stark, Chief Operating Officer of Lufthansa Technik, said the achievement demonstrates that additively manufactured metal parts can meet flight operations requirements. The partnership with Premium AEROTEC, which has produced structural components via 3D printing since 2016, provided the production scale and process discipline the certification demanded.

What changed on the shop floor

The titanium latch has a much longer expected life cycle than its polymer predecessor. That changes maintenance planning: instead of replacing an entire assembly, technicians can now swap a single part. Supply chain risk drops because the part no longer depends on a forge that may have discontinued the tooling.

Ulrich Weber, Chief Operating Officer at Premium AEROTEC, noted that the cooperation proves the company's comprehensive expertise in metal 3D printing can be applied to serial production of complex structural components.

For the broader industry, the case study is a concrete example of how additive manufacturing moves from prototyping to flight-critical repair. When spares disappear and lead times stretch, a certified digital inventory and a metal printer become a viable alternative to traditional forging.