Markforged Korea presents continuous fiber 3D printing for aerospace and defense applications

Markforged Korea held a July 21 webinar titled 'High-Stiffness Continuous Fiber 3D Printing for Aerospace and Defense Manufacturing Innovation,' led by country manager Seong-geun Cho. The presentation detailed the company's continuous fiber reinforcement (CFR) technology, which embeds continuous carbon fiber, Kevlar, or fiberglass into an Onyx nylon-6 base with 10% chopped carbon fiber. Cho stated the resulting parts achieve up to 25 times the stiffness of ABS and over three times that of aluminum, at less than half the weight. The company also highlighted its FX10 hybrid platform, which can switch between composite and metal printing (stainless steel, tool steel) in roughly 10 minutes via modular changeover, and supports vision-based layer monitoring with AI machine learning.

This presentation fits the established pattern of polymer composite AM vendors targeting aerospace tooling and non-critical production parts, leveraging flame-retardant (Onyx FR) and traceable materials with FAA and NCAMP certification. The FX10's hybrid capability and digital inventory concept address the defense sector's interest in distributed manufacturing and supply-chain resilience, but the technology remains limited to jigs, fixtures, tooling, and interior components rather than flight-critical structures. For practitioners, the key takeaway is that Markforged's CFR process offers a practical bridge between prototyping and production for low-to-mid volume composite parts, but qualification for primary aerospace structures remains distant.