Boom Supersonic cuts drill guide manufacturing cost 92% using Stratasys FDM

Boom Supersonic is using Stratasys FDM technology to produce drill guides for its Overture aircraft assembly line, reporting a 92% reduction in manufacturing cost versus its prior process. The guides are shop tooling used to align and position drilling operations on the airframe, not certified flight-critical hardware. The shift comes as Boom ramps up Overture development following the mid-2025 retirement of its XB-1 demonstrator, with the company targeting first flights within the next couple of years for an aircraft designed to fly at twice the speed of today's fastest passenger jets on 100% sustainable aviation fuel.

Tooling and fixtures are where FDM/FFF delivers fast returns in aerospace: unlike flight parts, drill guides carry no airworthiness certification burden, so cost and lead-time gains translate directly into shop-floor throughput rather than years of qualification testing. That distinction matters for a company compressing its development schedule ahead of a firm flight target. It also reflects a pattern largely absent from AM headlines: industrial jigs and fixtures rarely draw coverage the way structural or flight-critical parts do, even though they carry much of aerospace's near-term AM economics.

AM Pulse's index lists Boom Supersonic as an active, Centennial, Colorado hardware company founded in 2014, with zero active patent records linked in our name-matched, review-gated patent index, a coverage gap typical of tooling applications that don't generate standalone AM IP.