3D Printing Cuts Costs for Military Flight Simulator Controls

What the project needed

Wraith Systems had a specific manufacturing problem. The company produces Hands-On Throttle-And-Stick (HOTAS) system housings used in F-35 desktop flight training devices. The original process relied on casting. That worked for small batches, but scaling up meant longer lead times, higher per-part costs, and tooling that needed replacing whenever the design changed.

The U.S. military uses these simulators to train pilots before they touch the real aircraft. Any bottleneck in the supply chain for training hardware is a bottleneck for pilot throughput. Wraith needed a way to produce more parts faster without the overhead of traditional manufacturing.

The switch to large-format 3D printing

Wraith moved production to a large-format 3D Systems printer. The shift eliminated tooling costs entirely. Instead of waiting for a cast mold to be machined and qualified, the company could load a new CAD file and start building parts directly.

The scale of the parts mattered. HOTAS housings are not small consumer gadgets. They are full-size flight controls with ergonomic contours, mounting points, and structural requirements. A small desktop resin printer would not have handled them. The 3D Systems platform's build volume was the deciding factor.

According to the case study published by TCT Magazine, the transition from casting to additive manufacturing cut both cost and lead time. The exact figures were not disclosed, but the article frames the improvement as significant enough to justify switching a defense supplier's entire production method.

Why this matters for defense manufacturing

The U.S. defense sector has been cautiously exploring additive manufacturing for years. Most of the attention goes to metal 3D printing for engine components and airframe parts. This project is different. It uses polymer 3D printing for training hardware, which is a lower-risk entry point for additive manufacturing in military logistics.

Training equipment gets worn, broken, and upgraded more often than operational aircraft parts. That turnover creates a steady demand for replacement housings. A digital inventory that can be printed on demand eliminates the need to stockpile spares or wait for a production run to complete.

Wraith Systems is not the first company to apply 3D printing to HOTAS systems, but the scale at which it is now producing these parts puts it ahead of most small-batch defense 3D printing projects.

The bigger picture

Large-format polymer 3D printing is quietly expanding into sectors that traditional manufacturing has dominated. Aerospace companies are using it for tooling. Automotive firms are using it for full-scale prototypes. Now defense training hardware is adding another data point to the same trend.

The advantage is consistent: remove the tooling step, and you remove the time and cost that step imposes. For a military training program that needs to produce hardware at scale, that is a meaningful operational improvement.

Wraith Systems' case is also a useful reminder that 3D printing does not always need to produce the final flight part to deliver value. Training and simulation hardware sits in a comfortable middle ground: it needs to be durable and accurate, but it does not carry the same certification burden as flight-critical components.