Race to 1,000 Parts: 3D Printing vs. Injection Molding

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Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 81

@Formlabs Ай бұрын

Fast, cheap, good: can you really have all three? For years, injection molding has been the go-to solution for manufacturing plastic parts quickly, affordably, and with excellent quality. But with advancements in 3D printing, is that still true? Learn more: bit.ly/3OR61xW

@davex.4785 2 күн бұрын

38.4 seconds per part on the injection mold machine? Is there a video showing that?

@noanalyst Ай бұрын

They did a part 2 addressing many earlier questions. That is bold and speaks volumes.

@chrishill6876 Ай бұрын

Lack of colour options is a problem for final parts. If tough 2000 resin was available in black I would use it for a lot of finished applications.

@mikajurvanen8219 Ай бұрын

Spray it black? The surface of prints are excellent for an easy one coat spray.

@survival_man7746 Ай бұрын

At Plast 3D they can do any resin color by using pigments on a resin to color match with what you ask. Unless the resin only comes in a color that can't really be modified like black for example

@survival_man7746 Ай бұрын

@@mikajurvanen8219 most need to be sanded if you want good adhesion

@mikajurvanen8219 Ай бұрын

@@survival_man7746Formlabs has a colout kit aswell, but ony with proporties like their standard resins.

@3dkiwi920 Ай бұрын

Still much weaker, orders of magnitude in fact. Layer lines. Resin is far more expensive. A multi cavity mold can shoot hundreds of parts in less than a minute, and use recycled material. Aluminum molds cost hundreds of dollars only.

@josiahong5177 Ай бұрын

resin doesnt really have layer lines or z axis weakness. However, they only compared 1000 parts. Injection molding shines at quantities even greater than that.

@OneIdeaTooMany Ай бұрын

A part only needs to be as strong as it needs to be. Sometimes a 3D print is sufficiently strong provided the layers are oriented correctly and some don't care about layer lines if I tell them that hiding them will cost more. It's amazing how many people suddenly don't mind them when cost is a factor. For the FDM parts I sell, I can also customise them for the customer provided they can give me accurate dimensions. That's a service you can't offer with an injection molded part because you need a new mold. Injection molded parts still have their place but at much larger quantities and with much larger budgets. For smaller production runs, 3D printing is an affordable alternative.

@zachbrown7272 Ай бұрын

It's not much weaker, they showed that, and who the hell runs production of large amounts of parts in an aluminum mold?

@hughjeffncok Ай бұрын

@zachbrown7272 right! The mold would be heat soaked after the first shot

@Liberty4Ever Ай бұрын

I need to watch more videos about Formlabs part cleaning and post cure. That's what is keeping me from designing parts for resin printing, but I only have experience with consumer grade resin printing where post processing is awful. We need a solution where a build plate is slid into a machine that automatically washes off the excess resin on the build plate, removes the parts from the build plate and drops them into a secondary wash bath to finish removing the uncured resin without scratching the soft resin on the outside of the parts, and preferably UV post cures the parts as they're gently agitated in liquid, then air dries the parts. Once the post processing is automated and the resin and solvent costs are reduced, resin printed parts will absolutely overtake injection molding.

@KnowArt Ай бұрын

cool stuff! The future is bright. Can't wait to see what 3d printing is capable of in 10 years

@OneIdeaTooMany Ай бұрын

So if it takes weeks to even begin your production run injection molding a new part, how many 3D printed parts can you put out in that time? 1000 in 6 hours? With a print farm like Slant 3D you could potentially get your volume up pretty high and with 0 upfront costs and no stock. I think 3D printing should be a stepping stone to injection molded parts. Get the thing out there and in the hands of customers. Sell enough to warrant moving to injection molding.

@o_tdiggity Ай бұрын

I noticed that your spreadsheet doesn't include hardware, labor or maintenance costs for the Form machines. If you were to include those, the price per part jumps significantly: I asked chatgpt to help me here: Summary of Adjusted Costs: Form 4L: $11.33 per part for 1,000 parts. Form 4: $9.81 per part for 1,000 parts. chatgpt prompts: * It seems misleading to me because it doesn't factor in the cost of the Form 4L and Form 4 hardware and equipment and maintenance costs. If you were to factor those into the 1000 parts, how much would it costs per part for Form 4L and Form 4? Also, please include all costs like maintenance and labor. ----- If the idea was that the hardware/maintenance/labor cost are part of doing business and shouldn't be included, then I would ask what would be the expected cost per Form part if I were to outsource it?

@dandavid513 10 күн бұрын

Because you aren't throwing the machine out after the thousand parts. That injection molding machine is likely in the six figure range in cost, meaning each part would be over a hundred dollars. You do have to factor in the mold itself since it can only be used for that specific part.

@X_Studios Ай бұрын

What’s stopping are your 4l not in my shop

@Sciman101 Ай бұрын

If 3d printing has all these advantages over injection molding, taking all the numbers at face value, are you planning on making the part shown in the video 3d printed going forward? And if not, what would need to change for that to be an option? Being able to say "We use our own machines in production all the time" would be a pretty big confidence booster in the idea of 3dp for manufacturing.

@johnweaver4421 Ай бұрын

Why not buy 30 Saturn4Us for the same price and have 1100in² more surface area? What sets the Formlabs 4BL apart? Edit: for the record, my question is sincere and not intended to be interpreted in a scarstic manner.

@leinadreign3510 Ай бұрын

It is not a chinese machine and you support with it better wages and maybe you are also paying for the support? I honestly dont know, except that Formlabs is way out of my price range and Im not the targeted customer.

@goodfis624 Ай бұрын

Could you spell the name of that 3d printer correctly? I failed to find it in google

@johnnygotti1568 Ай бұрын

@@leinadreign3510well if it’s out of your price range, consider a bambulab x1-c! For very obvious reasons!

@mochmaster45 Ай бұрын

@@goodfis624is the elegoo saturn 4 ultra

@gioben5444 Ай бұрын

@@goodfis624 Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra

@joseph_n Ай бұрын

so is the parts in your machine 3d printed instead of injection molded?

@zachbrown7272 Ай бұрын

Yes, there are actually quite a few printed parts on Form 4.

@meslammer1744 Ай бұрын

1:35 - not including 19999$ of 4L tooling and 6599$ of Form 4 from buying your own printers, because you already own them? Okay.

@Eureka_3D_Printing Ай бұрын

The cost is amortized

@paultrautner1941 Ай бұрын

@@Eureka_3D_Printing but they did not amortize the tooling on the injection molding

@SeaMushroom98 28 күн бұрын

@@paultrautner1941 Tooling for the IM can only be used for a single part. I think their rationale here is that you would use their machines for many different runs of parts, and thus only need to absorb the depreciation expense for a fraction of the tool on this specific job. Kinda Accounting 101 actually...

@woobykal68 Ай бұрын

Very interesting.

@JulienStone Ай бұрын

Shall we talk about temperature resistance?

@zachbrown7272 Ай бұрын

SLA materials are arguably more temperature resistant. They are thermosets, so do not "melt" like a thermoplastic. Formlabs and other SLA makers also have specific high temp and flame retardant resins.

@JulienStone Ай бұрын

@@zachbrown7272 I disagree - just read the TDS for the Formlabs Black Resin V5 - the HDT @ 0.45 MPa is 69 degrees C and the HDT @1.8 MPa is 57 degrees C - this makes it unsuitable for engineering purposes.

@JulienStone Ай бұрын

@@zachbrown7272 Then if you compare it to the high-temp resin, you can see that the high temp is super brittle.

@JulienStone Ай бұрын

@@zachbrown7272Trying to compare SLA and Injection molded PET is outright ludicrous. Compare injection molded vs SLS (or MJF) PA12, elongation at break for SLS is around 30% whereas for IM you get around 250 to 300 %. Let's not even talk about SLA.

@JulienStone Ай бұрын

@@zachbrown7272 For SLA you either get the temperature resistance or the toughness, you can't get both.

@Fishbone8891 Ай бұрын

This is a fairly terrible comparison. The fact the injection mold wasnt sub gated tells me you didnt know what you were doing. You selected a formlabs material that wouldnt work in any real industrial setting were a PP, PBT, PA66, POM part would be typically spec'd. You ignored post processing time to remove supports, even with cutting two parts off a sprue, that is significantly faster than cutting off 5-6 supports from each of those parts. Sure, the form4L is impressive with its build volume and speed, but its accuracy pales in comparison to an injection mold and if you measured those parts bsck to cad they would not the same unless you put large tolerances on the to cover the differences.

@drew79s Ай бұрын

This is a bit dumb frankly... I can't say I've ever seen anyone who's made a bad enough production decision to make a thousand small injection moulded parts as a production run... Given the shut time on a small tool like that you're comparing 3d printing to maybe a half a day of production from a small injection molding machine. That type of machinery only makes sense at volumes well above 10k parts if for no other reason than because the set up and tear down time on the tooling will be in the ballpark of 4 times your actual production time. If you want to compare vs injection moulding at least use a week's worth of production on a small machine like that, maybe 25k parts... Realistically though you run those tools for hundreds of thousands of shots... This is like saying "a Ferrari is a crappy mobility scooter".

@Fishbone8891 Ай бұрын

We often use short run injection molding for prototyping and high cavitation in production for automotive applications. Many times the order for parts is less than a thousand to cover prototype builds. The kicker is, they would never allow a part from a formlabs machine, especially their junk black material

@jhonnyd3505 Ай бұрын

Save a lot money, with machining core molds....this is important

@drew79s Ай бұрын

@@Fishbone8891 sure, that makes sense. Make a prototype tooling run, that'll be quick low volume work but you can't make a pre production prototype with a completely different process to your planned volume production regardless. For anything injection moulded in production in the car industry a million is a low number 🤣

@drew79s Ай бұрын

@@jhonnyd3505 on 1% of a production run? What about the other 99% you need to make?

@jhonnyd3505 Ай бұрын

@@drew79s A 3D printed farm...

@anthonywalker6168 Ай бұрын

If it were ultimately practical to 3D print over injection moulding for commercial scale production, we would already have it as commonplace. Same with pin matrix tooling, metal 3D printing etc etc . Practicality is the destroyer of hopes, dreams and “coolness factors”

@OneIdeaTooMany Ай бұрын

3D printing hasn't been around for that long. I think it will have its place but the technology still has a long way to go.

@anthonywalker6168 Ай бұрын

@ it’s good to remain optimistic and hopeful. Also, continued research is always better than no research. However, the case of “it’s a matter of time” is generally a fallacy used to sell stocks rather than predict technological change.

@bloodtastesirony Ай бұрын

@@OneIdeaTooMany 3D printing has actually been around for over 30 years at this point. And it also is already used for commercial scale production --it's just that it's most commonly used at scale when mass customization is required (e.g. Invisalign) rather than the example shown here which is specifically a head to head comparison to IM which can't do mass customization

@SeaMushroom98 28 күн бұрын

It seems like they found at least one application where it does make more sense... Its another tool in the tool belt, not the ultimate production technology.

@thepuff791 Ай бұрын

But I bet the injection molder doesn't charge thousands of dollars to use other external materials 😮

@JeromeDemers Ай бұрын

And soon you will need to add 25% import tariff!

@Z-add Ай бұрын

People still not satisfied with this comparison

@jamieclarke321 Ай бұрын

It doesnt really matter how you bias the data, 3d printing is always going to be faster and cheaper for the smaller batch sizes and how many start ups need 1 million parts of anything? On cheaper resin printers i still strongly dislike the post processing and ive had so many materials fail over time in my applications like outdoor use and underwater. I dont know if a formlabs resin would address that but i prefer FDM

@zachbrown7272 Ай бұрын

I'll say the formlabs materials are worlds better than the cheap stuff.

@Liberty4Ever Ай бұрын

@@zachbrown7272 - I designed and printed small antenna spacers on a consumer grade MSLA 3D printer. They need good tensile strength. I printed them from Siraya Tech Fast ABS-like resin and tested them by hanging them outdoors in the sun and weather for a year. They only got harder. There was no surface chalking from UV degradation or oxidation. The year old parts looked new. I believe the smallest cross section was 5 mm x 5 mm with 1 mm radius on the corners and they survived a 200 pound tensile pull test. Presumably Formlab resin is even better? The comments have many criticisms of 3D printed part strength and that's probably an issue if printing art miniatures from non-structural resin but not an issue for structural resin parts. I assume the comments about layer strength are from people who are confusing resin printing with FDM 3D printing.