Subaru accelerates automotive tooling with high-speed additive manufacturing

Subaru of America designs and supports automotive accessories and installation tooling used across its vehicle installation lines. To keep pace with changing requirements and avoid delays on production lines, the company relies on rapid tooling development with consistent quality and short turnaround times.

Traditional tooling methods, including outsourced machining, often involve long lead times and high costs, limiting flexibility during development. Subaru’s engineering teams therefore set out to increase the speed and responsiveness of in-house tooling production while maintaining repeatability and part quality.

Limitations of conventional tooling and prototyping workflows
Before adopting high-speed additive manufacturing, tooling development cycles were constrained by production bottlenecks and external dependencies. Large-format tools required extended build times, and changes late in development increased the risk of wasted material and rework.

Reducing development time, lowering prototyping and tooling costs, and responding more quickly to internal customer needs were key objectives for Subaru’s engineering teams.

High-speed print head enables faster large-format tooling
To address these challenges, Subaru implemented a high-speed print head on its existing large-format 3D printing platform. The solution allows the company to produce tooling components in-house using additive manufacturing, consolidating production onto a single system.

The high-speed print head increases material deposition rates while maintaining part quality, enabling faster production of large tools. In practice, Subaru has achieved a 1.96× speed increase when printing a 36-inch tool compared with the standard print head. Overall tooling development time has been reduced by more than 50%, while total prototyping and tooling costs have dropped by 70%.

Improving responsiveness and reducing development risk
By producing tools faster and earlier in the development cycle, Subaru’s engineering teams can validate designs sooner and identify issues before tools are deployed in production. This reduces the risk of defects and minimizes wasted time and material.

As Matt Daroff, Project Engineering Manager at Subaru of America, explains, earlier availability of tooling allows internal teams to make corrections sooner, improving overall efficiency and reliability across installation workflows.

Supporting scalable automotive tooling production
The introduction of the high-speed print head has also reduced Subaru’s reliance on outsourced manufacturing and long lead times typically associated with CNC machining. By keeping tooling production in-house, the company maintains greater control over quality, scheduling, and costs.

For Stratasys, the case demonstrates how high-speed additive manufacturing can address common tooling challenges in industrial environments. Faster turnaround, lower costs, and consistent part quality enable automotive manufacturers like Subaru to remain agile while supporting demanding production operations.