Regardless of where you are in the supply chain, 3D printing can save your business time and money when compared to traditional manufacturing methods like injection molding and subtractive manufacturing. In this article, we’ll look at three concrete scenarios that illustrate how additive manufacturing can produce cost savings for a wide variety of industry use cases.
1. Prototyping and Design Iteration
Designing a new part or product almost always involves multiple iterations. It can be extremely helpful during this iteration process to have a physical prototype of each design iteration, but traditional manufacturing methods can make this prohibitive in terms of time and cost.
If you go with injection molding, you will need to have a mold made for each iteration. From a monetary standpoint, this will be expensive. From a time standpoint, this could take upwards of eight weeks per mold, meaning that a project with 10 design iterations (which is not uncommon) could require more than a year spent on prototyping, the majority of which would be spent just waiting for the test parts to arrive.
Subtractive manufacturing methods like machining also present a challenge. Like injection molding, subtractive manufacturing requires upfront setup work and may require custom fixturing or tooling. This means that the price of each prototype part is likely to be very high – in fact, some machine shops won’t even quote jobs for a quantity of one because it doesn’t make business sense for them to do so.
3D printing is the perfect solution for prototyping and design iteration because it doesn’t require custom molds, fixturing, or tooling. As such, the cost for a single part remains reasonable, and lead times are much shorter compared to other manufacturing methods. At 3D Parts Unlimited, we have a standard lead time of 5-7 days, which means that you could literally save months during the prototyping process when compared to injection molding or subtractive manufacturing.
2. Manufacturing Production Quantities
Injection molding is a common choice for production runs of parts. However, additive manufacturing can be more economical than injection molding for low to medium production quantities. As with prototyping, the key advantage of using additive manufacturing for production is that it does not require the creation of a mold.
When is it best to use 3D printing vs. injection molding? It depends on the size and complexity of the part, as well as the quantity required. Generally speaking, 3D printing will be more cost-effective per piece up to quantities of 500 to 10,000. However, for certain small parts, the crossover point may be as high as 50,000 pieces due to the number of parts we can fit in a single build.
3. Managing Inventory Costs
Carrying physical inventory can be expensive. 3D printing can help with this problem by opening up the possibility of a Digital Inventory.
Instead of physically storing fixtures, jigs, and extra parts on a shelf, you can store the design files for those items in a digital repository. When you need one of the items, have it 3D printed on demand. We offer a standard 5-7 day lead time at 3D Parts Unlimited, meaning you can always have quick access to your exact fixtures and spare parts without needing to store them in your own facility.
3D Parts Unlimited: Your Cost Savings Partner for Manufacturing
If you’re looking to reduce your supply chain or manufacturing costs, look no further than 3D Parts Unlimited. We are experts in industrial 3D printing and offer a wide variety of 3D printing technologies. Request a quote for us today to learn more about how we can help your business save money and time through additive manufacturing.