Additive manufacturing is here to stay! As someone in the industry I think this is a given that I was going to fall on this side of the fence, however I will do my best to explain why I think it is a big part of not just the future but of the present. Of course it would be quite naïve to think that this way of manufacturing is going to take over ever facete of production and to be clear it is not and is certainly not going to today. However over the past several years additive manufacturing and 3D printing have made great strides and are ready to take over some of the production from traditional CNC manufacturing and even injection molding.

I will start with additive vs traditional machining of plastics when does it make sense and when doesn't it and since I operate J10 Prints lets start with when you should.

I think the most obvious of answers is when a machinist would have to remove large amounts of materials this takes time and can use quite a bit of material when an additive product doesn't cut down on material but rather builds it up until the digital file is a real life product. Secondly the more complex a product is the more and more you should be considering additive manufacturing. The longer your team is going to be paying someone sit behind the mill the more it makes sense to give us a call. My third point will be accuracy and I could understand if this is disputed, but I do have a little experience in both areas and after tuning in our SLS printer believe that the accuracy in our products can rival the best of traditional machining. Speed is another one that could be disputed and for good reason but if it is a lot of smaller parts additive manufacturing is going to have the upper hand.

When traditional manufacturing makes sense. Large objects using lots of materials. Stock materials are always going to be cheaper than turning powder into stock shapes. Additive manufacturing requires powder that is flat out expensive to be turned into parts. The heavier the part the more difficult it will be for an additive manufacturing process to compete pricewise with traditional manufacturing. Overall it comes down what is more costly labor hours or materials?

Injection molding verses additive manufacturing: A lot of the same concepts apply as they did in traditional machining vs additive. Materials used in an injection molding machine are going to be much cheaper than that used in an additive process. With that being said it takes a lot of materials to make up for the high upfront cost of tooling for injection molding. For this reason some times it makes sense to use additive manufacturing instead for small quantity runs. Another benefit to additive would be changes to products are as simple as a new CAD file where in an injection molding process changes usually require all new tooling. So the comparison in a nutshell is this: the best process is going to be determined by quantity. Need 100,000 parts? choose injection molding. Need 1,000 parts? Additive is probably a better choice. Of course these numbers are just examples and very dependent on size and complexity so always feel free to reach out for a quote.