Getting you product manufactured with 3D printing rather than injection molding is a great option to reduce the cost of getting started. 

We've pulled together the basic steps of getting your product manufactured with Slant 3D so you know what to expect.

Etsy is a great platform to produce customized items for customers. Many etsy stores are popping up that create customized 3D Printed items such as cookie cutters, lamps, and other items.

Most Etsy stores have to buy and maintain 3D Printers in order to produce 3D printed items. Which just adds that much more work onto a full-time job of operating and marketing your store as well as creating new designs, not to mention the cost of buying those machines. But it is possible to outsource all of the manufacturing a fullfillment so that etsy sellers can focus on product design and manufacturing. 

Get a Design or Idea for a Product
To 3D print a product there has to be a computer 3D model of it. Slant 3D can help you create this. Or you can use resources like Fiverr and Freelancer.com.

Submit the Design
When the 3D model is ready you can submit it for a quote. A sales engineer will be put in contact with you and they will get you a quote to manufacture the product for your store and ship it to your customers when orders come in. All designs that are submitted to Slant 3D are kept confidential and will not be shared or utilized.

Start your Store
If you accept the quote then we will finalize the details and help you connect your etsy store so that when orders arrive they can be printed and shipped to your customer.

We 3D Print and Ship
When an order comes into your store. We will be notified or you can submit the 3D model to us (if it is custom) we will then 3D print the model and ship it to your customer.

Have the Resources to grow as big and as fast as you need
When you work with Slant 3D you have a the resources of one of the world's largest 3D Printing Farms to support you. Slant 3D is able to produce 10,000 parts per week and that is growing all the time. So as you sell more you can be sure that the infrastructure is there to support you.​

How Long Does is Take for a Product to be Printed?
Slant 3D works to produce any 3D printed part within 1-3 business days. So if your customer orders a custom cookie cutter on Tuesday, it will be shipped out to them no later than Friday.

Cost?
Since Slant 3D operates at such a large scale so smaller new products and stores can take advantage of of our economies and automation. That makes our cost of production very low. 

There is a monthly membership fee of $50 and then the quoted cost to produce your product. We understand the challenge to start a new store. But there are no minimum quantities, and you only pay for parts when a customer buys from them.

What is the Quality?
All of the Etsy stores that we have worked with have only 5 star reviews. BakersStreetCutters is a great example. We do not let quality drop. And if an order is not up to spec? We will reprint, reship, and refund the order immediately.

Can I do more than 1 Item?
You can do infinite items. We work with stores that do customization of every single item. So a doorstop may have a name engraved. And we work with stores that have 5-20 core products that we manufacture or support them with. There are no restrictions on the number of designs that we can produce for you.

What 3D Printing Process do you use?
We use the FDM 3D printing. This is most commonly used on Etsy and is the lowest cost 3D printing process in existence. And it allows our clients to access low cost hardware for prototyping of new designs.

Etsy is a great platform that has great opportunity for 3D printed products. And now it is easier than ever to start a small online business with 3D printed designs. All you have to do is upload a design, setup an etsy, store and pay when someone pays you.

The cost to launch a new product is nothing. And there is no inventory and no hassle of printing and shipping the item. Now you can focus on the design and sales of your products. 

Since 2017 Slant 3D has been working to make mass production of 3D Printed FDM parts viable. We have designed and manufactured brand new 3D Printers such as the Mason. We have built one of the world's largest 3D printing farms. And we have started production of 3D filament in order to reduce cost to our customers. But now we are taking another large step. In 2020 Slant 3D will open a factory that will contain 800 automated 3D Printers. Called Printer Farm Beta, this will be the largest 3D Printing farm in the world.

Printer Farm Beta will dramatically increase the production capacity of Slant 3D. Allowing us to produce hundreds of thousands of 3D printed parts each month at cost and scale 3D printing has never achieved before.

The facility will be operated much like a server farm. Rows of machines will autonomously produce parts that will collect in bins until technicians retrieve them. Primary conveyors running down the center of the factory will deliver the bins of parts to Quality Control and Shipping

All 3D Printers operate independently. Slant 3D Printers can produce parts for days without human interaction. The entire facility will be operated and monitored through the Cloud. The few technicians present will maintain and repair 3D printers as needed and ensure that all parts are produced to the client's specifications.

The facility will open Feburary 1st, 2020. And will immediately begin production to help our clients start and grow their product lines. 

Slant 3D is on a mission to make manufacturing as simple as app development. Printer Farm Beta will truly make 3D printing a large scale alternative to injection molding at any volume.

​When part is made with high volume production 3D Printing, it is composed of individual layers. Much like the coil pots made from the playdough snakes that you created in kindergarten, only 1000 times smaller (5-30 microns).

Above is a part that was printed with wood-filled PLA filament, at a relatively low resolution. But the layer lines add to the model. They actually give the wooden piece a grain. So that is looks like it was carved from a solid piece of tree trunk. That is practically impossible to achieve with other processes.

But the designer found a way to use the layer lines of 3D Printing as an advantage. ​

The Largest Benefit of production 3D Printing is that elimination of molding costs. 3D Printing does not require a mold. So all of that up front cost disappears

At low volumes 3D Printing can be expensive per part, but when you move past 1000, that added cost is negligible.

3D Printing is also a perfectly on-demand process. So you do not have to order 10,000's of parts and then warehouse them for months with the risk of none of them selling. You order what you need when you need it and it is produced then. No more, no less. In fact, at Slant 3D we support on-demand manufacturing. So a Part is made and shipped only when it is ordered.

The combination of those factors allow companies to test, iterate, and scale much faster than with molding. With Production 3D Printing if a design needs to be changed all that has to change is the CAD file. Then every part made after is updated. This is just like changing the color of your website. Companies can now iterate and test in production on products.

At Slant 3D we deploy hundreds of FDM 3D Printers that run 24/7 making parts. With this process each individual part can take quite a bit of time to make. It might take an hour to make a part. But if 100 machines are making that part, we are now producing at 100 parts an hour and 2400 parts per day. 

This type of system is called a 3D Printer Farm. Currently Slant 3D operates the largest commercial FDM 3D Printing farm in the US. 

With this process manufacturers use large single machines that are very fast.

For example Carbon 3D uses a Light-Resin technology to produce parts very quickly. So instead of a part requiring hours it can be done in minutes. This replaces the hundreds of machines with just a few machines. But if a machine breaks down then all of production stops.

High volume 3D Printing is not a common resource but there are a number of companies that can product 1000's of part for you in a number of different specs

Carbon 3D - SLA
​Carbon will connect you with its production partners that can produce high resolution resin 3D Prints.

Slant 3D - FDM
Slant 3D Operates one of the largest 3D Printing Farms in the world. You can submit a design directly to them and they quote you within 1-2 days.

​Forecast 3D - MJF
Forecast 3D is one of the original HP partners on MJF. They are experienced and able to produce large quantities of small parts very readily.

There are literally hundreds of 3D Printing companies out there. But who does what. Here are several of the most popular 3D Printing service companies for your next prototype or production project.

Carbon 3D manufactures high speed SLA 3D Printers using thier Carbon CLIP technology. These printers are used to create dentures, Bicycle seats, and even a line of shoes for Adidas. 

The surface finish of SLA parts is very good, comparable to injection molding, but they can be expensive if they are very large or low volume. SLA is also able to handle very fine features well that are impossible with any of the other processes.

Carbon will connect you to services that use their technology. One of the most well known partners is Fast Radius. They have also worked with adidas to manufacture the Alphaedge 4D shoe.

Slant 3D operates one of the largest capacity 3D printer farms in the world. The original facility is able to produce 10,000 parts per week and Slant 3D is about to open an even larger facility with over 800 machines in the printer farm.

Slant 3D uses the FDM 3D Printing process. These parts are robust and excellent for functional products and industrial components. Slant 3D also produces pieces for consumer products and is able to fulfill orders as they are made.

Forecast 3D actually utilizes a large number of 3D printing processes. A company that has been in operation since the 90's Forecast was among the first to implement HP Multijet Fusion. Today they operate 24 MJF machines and made more than 1 million parts in the first year.

MJF is a process that creates high surface finish parts that are nearly isotropic. But it is limited to gray/black coloring and is only viable for production on pieces that are smaller.

Shapeways is easily one of the oldest 3D printing services. Started in 2007 they have established themselves as an online print on demand platform for designers. Shapeways offers predominantly laser sintering services. Which allows them to create fine detail items ranging from rubber-like plastic to gold. 

If you are a jewelry designer or have a small and precise part to make Shapeways is a good option. 

Voodoo Manufacturing is another larger FDM printer farm. Utilizing Replicator II Makerbot machines and Formlabs SLA parts Voodoo is able to produce 1-off parts very quickly and quite affordably. Their 3D Printer farm of nearly 150 machines also allows you to scale up production to nearly 1000 parts.

Another old name in the 3D Printing world. 3D Hubs was started as a network of independent garage 3D printers. In 2017-2018 they refocused on industrial 3D Printing.

They now connect customers with 3D printing services that are ISO certified and held to very high standards. They are an excellent resource for finding new suppliers and having prototypes produced that are engineering grade.

Injection Molding has been the primary means of producing large quantities of plastic parts for nearly 100 years. 3D Printing has been a means of prototyping for only about 30 years. But they are beginning to overlap. And there are many reasons that 3D Printing is starting to become a better alternative to injection molding.

The key advantage of production 3D Printing is that it does not require molds. A design can be changed simply by changing a CAD design. This means that companies can produce several versions of the same physical product at scale and test how they sell. This is much how internet companies test different versions of a website to see how they perform. 

The ability to iterate without setting a part into stone, allows companies to test products, and make changes based on customer needs. It also allows companies to have many variations of the same product made without extra cost in order to address different customer niches.

3D Printing is able to produce hundreds of thousands of parts at a cost similar to injection molding. But it is also able to produce just a few parts at a price that is much less than injection molding. This means that a company company can make 10 pieces of a product, test market those, and then make 100 pieces. Then a 1000, then 10,000. 

3D Printing is very scalable. So a small business can start with small production runs and then scale up to whatever the demand for the product is. This means that no cost is ever wasted. The parts can be made as needed without much need for warehousing or inventory or any kind.

The way most 3D printing printing processes work, especially FDM, there are far fewer constraints on geometry than with molding. Parts can be made thick with a hollow honeycomb interior so that they are stronger than molded parts. Holes can be cut that curve through the parts, again impossible with injection molding. 

Something as simple as a solid 2 inch cube is impossible to produce with injection molding. But is simple and very affordable with 3D Printing.

Another large advantage of 3D printing is the precise control of the surface of the part. 3D Printed parts can have a texture applied to them while they are being made. So the texture is basically free to add to the part.

There is a common misconception that 3D Printing is far more expensive than injection molding. This may have been true 5 years ago. But it is no longer.

At Slant 3D we find that on average we can produce up to 20-50,000 parts or more before a mold becomes more economical than 3D printing. This is not only because of the cost of the mold. But the cost of warehousing and wasted product. Generally 10% of the cost of a final product is in the inventory. And often 10-20% of all inventory is just not sold. 

Since production 3D Printing allows parts to be made on demand it is possible to produce parts only as needed. So less warehousing is needed and there is never unsold inventory. In some cased Slant 3D will only produce parts for a client once those parts are sold, so there is never any inventory or wasted product.

The fact that production 3D printing is reaching a point where is is simply more efficient to produce parts with than injection molding, and give companies the ability to better address product problems makes is very compelling compared to molding.

There is also the fact that the design freedom of 3D printing allows businesses to address individual niches very affordably. So even though 3D printing can't yet make the Millions of parts that molding can, the necessity for that volume may not be necessary. Why sell 1 million of a single product when you can sell 1000, of 100 different products that each customer would like better.​

3D Printing very likely will drive the market away from injection molding. The high up front cost and lack of flexibility will simply become to expensive.

Interested in having your product manufactured with Production 3D Printing. Get a free quote from Slant 3D within 1-2 business day.

Architects and builders have the challenging problem of communicating clearly what an expensive building will look like before it is built. There are no do overs. 3D Modeling has helped this problem a lot. Architects can show photo-realistic images of the building and the layout. But it is still not quite intuitive for people to understand what the actual physical building will look like. 3D Printing models of homes and buildings gives a clear and intuitive representation of what a building will be in a way that photos and drawings just can't communicate.

Slant 3D produces thousands of 3D printed parts per week as an alternative to injection molding. All that is needed to take advantage of this is a 3D model of a building. Then it can be produced in large quantities for promotion of subdivisions and factory homes. The models can be on an agents desk and be a gift to the buyer when they select a home.

But really the most important part of 3D printed architectural models is the communication. They make the layout and proportions abundantly clear. Humans think in 3D space. We have difficulty interpreting drawings and even walking through VR, because it just doesn't have the context that a 3D physical model does. These 3D printed houses ensure that there is no confusion between the builder, the buyer, or the designer. Buyers can hold the model to know what they will get. And Builders can use the model to communicate to subcontractors what they need.

Production 3D printing is often considered to be a process limited to rigid materials. But that is just not the case. High Volume 3D Printing farms, such as those operated by Slant 3D, are able to produce thousands of low durometer parts, all without the cost of injection molding, and much more affordably than other additive processes.

Currently Slant 3D is able to 3D print parts in materials with durometers as low as Shore 00 40. This allows us to make objects such as custom 3D printed insoles, and rubber-like toys. And if we move into harder versions of flexible than we can manufacture items like bike helmets and industrial wheels. 

The material that is used to achieve this is TPU (Thermoplastic polyurethane). This rubber material is ideal for all kinds of flexible applications. It can be engineered to be wear, and heat resistant. And we also produce components with ESD safe properties.

Since TPU is so durable and flexible it is ideal for manufacturing the soles of shoes. Feetz is one company that attempted to bring about 3D printed Shoes. Newcomers such as Zellerfeld are also working on designs for 3D printed shoes.

All over the world people are using TPU 3D printing to create custom insoles. Pes Sem Dor in South America gathers data about customers feet and then produces custom insoles. Slant 3D performs the manufacturing of similar insoles here in the United States for several different clients.

Since TPU creates such compliant 3D printed parts it is often used in the production of industrial components, such as rollers and robot grippers. The parts are then put to use inside of factories moving other products around. 

The 3D Printed TPU is able to hold up through thousands of cycles without breaking down and ensures that new parts can be obtained readily without having to find new molders 5 years down the line.

TPU is just another one of the materials that Production FDM 3D Printing is ideally suited to. At Slant 3D we have worked for several years to implement high volume production of parts made with the material. And we have achieved that. We are now able to produce literally thousands of Flexible 3D printed parts per week. This means there is no longer a need for molds or tooling of any kind.

If you would like to get a quote for manufacturing your Flexible Rubber part please submit your design for a quote and one of our engineers will be in contact within 1-2 business days.

Idaho is largely an agricultural and heavy metal manufacturing state. But there is also a good piece of technology located in the state. As as these manufacturers grow they utilize more and more 3D Printing. Here are a few 3D Printing services that operate in the State of Idaho.

Intermountain 3D is a reverse engineering and 3D Printing service company. They are able to 3D scan products or create 3D models from scratch and then turn those models into 3D printed prototypes using the SLA or SLS processes. They can also handle limited production

Started in 2014 Intermountain 3D is also reseller of professional 3D Printers.

Operating one of the largest 3D Printing factories in North America Slant 3D focuses on production of 3D printed parts. With a capacity of over 10,000 parts per week, Slant 3D serves as a more affordable alternative to injection molding.

Slant also maintains a team of engineers to ensure that you can take your product from napkin to production with as few steps as possible. They also support materials ranging from simple bioplastics to ESD safe materials for electronics.

Started by Justin Shook. Shook Ideas is a product design company that has  a proven track record of creating, marketing and manufacturing final products with 3D Printing. They utilize the FDM process through a group of Ultimaker 3D printers.

Originally from Portland, RapidMade maintains an office in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. This manufacturing service is able to take a concepts all the way to production with injection molding. They support all types of 3D Printing processes including MJF, polyjet and FDM.

Based in Boise Idaho, 3 Solutions Design provides 3D printing, machinging, and fabrication services. They utilize statysys 3D printers to create good quality prototypes and can transfer designs over to other processes as well.