From the course: Additive Manufacturing: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

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Design for injection molding vs. 3D printing

Design for injection molding vs. 3D printing

- [Instructor] 3D printing and injection molding are often talked about as competing technologies. A more subtle point though, is that parts typically need to be redesigned somewhat when moving from one fabrication technique to another. In this movie, we talk about ways to try and split the difference. So the design will need only minor differences moving from one to the other. First, when does it make sense to use 3D printing versus injection molding? Somewhere between 1000 and 10000 parts. It's usually the break even point. Although higher volumes 3D printing service bureaus may change that. Injection molding is much faster than 3D printing. Typically a hundred to a thousand times as fast per part compared to a single 3D printer. However, injection molding requires creating tooling which can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Creating tooling also takes time. So if you need 10,000 of something in a hurry…

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