The EU has announced new laws that will require that appliances be cheaper to repair than replace for up to 10 years.

The Ecodesign Directive requires that manufacturers stock repair parts for up to 10 years. This can be tremendous burden to appliance manufacturers because new appliances must be introduced every 1-2 years in order to keep pace the with the technology demands of consumers. It is quite possible that some lean manufactures will not be able to sustain the large inventories of spare parts to support this type of regulation. But smaller companies and upstarts will have to innovate to address the new standards.

Fortunately they may not not have to. Additive manufacturing will allow these companies to hold their inventory digitally, and only manufacture it as needed.

Instead of storing vast inventories of spare parts for years companies can design parts for washing machines, microwaves, etc to be 3D Printed. Then they simply have to stock parts as needed for specific time periods. Large quantities during production. And then only at the rate that spare parts are needed. This eliminates the need for stagnant capital kept in inventory. Essentially companies will have to design for Just-In-Time Manufacturing.

This would normally be a challenge. But production 3D Printing services like Slant 3D and others have the capacity to produce parts at rates that can meet the production requirements of these companies as they build and scale new products. Our High capacity 3D Printing farms can produce thousands of parts per week and our engineers are present to help you design your product appropriately. Submit initial designs for a quote of the product.

There seems to be hundreds of 3D Printers available to pick from. Cheap chinese kits and exceptionally expensive industrial systems. But what are the machines that simply work. Good quality machines that might not be the cheapest but are tools that you can rely on to make a good quality part ever time. Here are some good quality workhorse 3D Printers.

The Mason V1 is a 3D Printer specifically designed to run for years with just normal maintenance. Born from printers designed for high volume 3D printing in a factory the Mason is made from a tough aluminum extrusion frame and 3D Printed parts created by the Mason itself. One truly unique advantage of the Mason is that any part made on it can immediately be produced by the thousands by the Slant 3D printing factories without samples are setup fees making it ideal for prototype to production design and planning. Through the Mason does have a slightly smaller print volume than other machines on this list.

The smallest machine in this lineup. The Ultimaker 3 is a proven machine that has been around for awhile. With a completely integrated software, material, and machine setup Ultimaker makes it easy to get start printing quickly. Though maintenance can be difficult given the closed off nature of the machine and components.

It does boast dual extrusion which allows it to print parts with multiple materials.

At Slant 3D we are constantly working to add new materials and capabilities to our high volume 3D printing facilities. About a year ago we partnered with 3DXTech and Essentium to integrate ESD safe plastics into the production capabilities of Slant 3D.

ESD safe materials are those that prevent electrostatic charges from building up in a component. When you are shocked by a doorknob that is an ESD (Electrostatic Discharge). Those charges can damage electrical components. So all material in an electronics factory have to be ESD Safe.

It is very difficult to make 3D printing materials ESD safe. The only way to achieve it is to integrate carbon nanotubes into the polymer so they conduct electricity away. Essentium and 3DXTech are the only companies that have reliably created these types of materials with verified results.

Slant 3D has been doing production of 3D printed jigs, fixtures, and enclosures for electronics for some time. Usually the only electrical requirement was insulation and fire resistant behavior. But we recognized the need for ESD safe materials with several of our clients so we started to develop the 3D printing processes to handle these materials.

The ESD safe plastics that are now utilized at Slant 3D are High Rigidity TPU from Essentium and PLA from 3DXTech. These allow us to create tough functional components and ESD-safe prototypes for all of our clients. These materials are also integrated for high volume production. So final products can be 3D printed at scale with ESD safe materials, without the cost of tooling.

At Slant 3D we are constantly working to add new materials capabilities to our production 3D printing factories. So far we have integrated 3D printing materials ranging from bio-degradable bio-plastics to Carbon Fiber Nylons. And we will continue to build this catalog.

If you have a project that requires 3D printing with a specialty material please contact us for a free 3D printing quote and our engineers will work with you to get product and material integrated into our production capabilities so you can have your parts as soon as possible without the cost of tooling.

Collaborative robots are a great resource for smaller companies looking to automate. They are a flexible resource for completing repetitive tasks in assembly and sorting because of their flexibility and ease of training. The trouble is that robot grippers are not very versatile. Often each task needs its own specialty gripper to be created to grasp the objects in that task.

Creating these grippers is both expensive and difficult due to CAD requirements and machining costs. 3D Printing makes the creation of EOAT much easier and flexible.

3D Printing is a very flexible means of manufacturing EOAT. It allows users to very quickly create custom fingers or parts nests without many machining concerns or time input. That is why Schunk has started providing resources to create custom 3D Printed end effectors. EMI has also started selling 3D Printed EOAT solutions. And there is the Slant 3D Part Mason Project that provides customisable Grippers for Collaborative robots.

Since there are so few design constraints on 3D printed parts you also don't have to worry about high costs of engineering and design bottlenecks.

 Get a Model
At Slant 3D we maintains a team of 3D modelers that can help you design a gripper for your application within hours or days. You can also access pre-made 3D models for gripper fingers and pads at Part Mason. The models are ready immediately to be printed by a service or on your in-house 3D printer.

One other option is to use online resources such as eGrip by Schunk which can generate .STEP files that can be 3D Printed very affordably.

The internet has allowed the sale of products to anyone in the world. Whether those be consumer or industrial products. But that access is ruined when the products have to cross borders or oceans. Shipping a crate overseas then paying tariff and warehousing fees significantly increases the cost of a product to the end-user. Wouldn't it be great if Parts and products could be "teleported" to the destination country with just an e-mail to save those shipping costs. With Production 3D printing that is possible.

3D Printing allows 3D models to be emailed and manufactured anywhere in the world. The trouble has always been there has never been a formal entity that can print your parts in the country where they are to be sold and ensure they are shipped to customers. 3D Printing services like Slant 3D allow products designed in one country to be produced and fulfilled in another country without the cost of shipping. And Slant 3D can hold your model in our digital inventory and produce it only when it is needed.

By using Slant 3D you can take your product international and not have to deal with international shipping costs. And you have the huge production scale of Slant 3D. So you know that when demand rises we are able to back you up. This is a great resources of companies and entrepreneurs outside of the United States to send their production to the US without the high cost of shipping.

3D Printing is quickly becoming a best option for production of plastic parts. You have little-no inventory. You can send your parts anywhere in the world for free, and you are able to grow without any high up-front investments.

Slant 3D already doing this with dozens of companies and entrepreneurs. They include companies like Uncommon, a project call Part Mason, and Etsy stores such as BakersStreetCuters. All of these products are manufactured and fulfilled from Slant 3D. But most of them are designed outside of the United States

At Slant 3D we often work with companies that are either considering building a 3D printer farm or are looking to complement their existing 3D printer farm. We are obviously biased toward not building a 3D printer farm in house, but there are a number of reasons for that. If we were to sum it up then we might just ask you "Why don't you buy an injection molding machine?" Buying a machine like that is equivalent or better than building a 3D printer farm. With this post we'd like to expand on some of the reasons to and not to build an in-house 3D printer farm

3D Printers are expensive. Yes there are machines that cost $200 dollars (see "depreciation" below). But you are building a miniature factory. You need good equipment, not cheap equiptment. So lets say that you are buying high quality machines like the Ultimaker or a Mason. You can expect to spend $1000-$2000 dollars per machine. So if you want to create a "farm" you can expect to spend nearly $10,000 dollars before you even get your first parts out. And, if budgetarily you have to use cheap machines, you are still spending $1000-$2000 before you can produce parts.

The alternative would be to put those thousands of dollars into a service like Slant 3D. There you could invest a bit at a time at get 10 parts, then 100 parts, then 1000 parts, and so on. And you are profitable as soon as you sell your first part. With building you printer farm you essenatially go into debt and then you have to pay it off. 

In short building a printer farm for you business is like buying a mold. High up front cost that you have to pay off with sales. Contrasted with a service where your per part margins might be smaller but you are always profitable.

Say you have a printer farm. And now you have a successful business that is selling parts. But now you are limited by how fast you can afford to buy more machines. Clients might be clamoring for your product. But your farm can only produce them so quickly, so you can only sell so many, so you only have so much money coming it. You can't just push a button and produce 1000 parts. You have to wait for them 10 at a time.

Using a service you have an entire factory backing you up. Hundreds of machines. Thousands of parts per week. At Slant 3D we produce about 15,000 parts per week. And accessing that capacity does not cost you more. In fact, producing higher volumes of parts at Slant 3D decreases the cost per part.

So with a printer farm, you are forced to buy more machines as you grow, and that limits how fast you can grow. With a service you can make ten parts in a week or 1000 parts in a week the costs drops. So as you grow you make more money without any other upfront investment.

(As an aside to this. Services do have limited capacity. And with 100 clients needed parts produced in a week, sometimes it can take longer. But a slightly longer lead time from a service is still freer than the incremental increase of adding another printer)

This is why you do not want to use $200 dollar machines to build a printer farm. They will operate continuously for 6 months then fall into such a state of disrepair that they are basically useless and you have to replace them. Contrasted with a good quality prosumer or commercial machine, such as the Mason. That is designed to operate for years without breaking down.

But even with good machines in your farm. They do eventually break down and need to be replaced. And that is another cost of operations that you have to deal with. Most consumer machines will only run 1-2 years tops until they have to be replaced. So you have 50% depreciation on your farm each year. So if your farm costs 5000 dollars to setup, 2500 dollars disappeared after the first year. That was $2500 that could have gone to into actual parts that could be sold if you used a service.

Services have this baked into the model. And at places like Slant 3D, we actually manufacture our own machines in order to minimize this cost. But that is not feasible for other companies because they don't have the resources to design a printer farm 3D Printer.

3D Printers need a lot of maintenance. If you are only maintaining 10 printers you are going to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping them running. They plug, they jam, they go out of alignment. All of that is time lost that could have been put towards improving your product or selling more of it.

And what happens when you simply do not have the expertise to maintain your printers. Then they may be thrown out and written off as an expense.

You can expect that about 5-10% of the cost of your farm will have to be invested in maintenance, and that does not include time-spent. 

Again services have the advantage of having this baked into their business models. They are able to streamline and standardize maintenance so that it is minimized

We did not include labor before, now we will. 3D Printer farms are very labor intensive. And they require expertise. You are not operating a fleet of microwaves. You are operating a fleet of CNC machines.

Each machine must be tuned and prepped with the correct material. The files on the machines must be sliced and tested. Then the prints must be started on each machine. And those prints must be removed when each machine is done. When prints come off the machines, they must have supports removed and be refined for shipping.

All of this is a labor cost. If you are starting a company you can count your labor as free, but that is not the case as soon as you hire an employee to do this work. Labor is a big component of 3D printer farms. They are not low effort.

This is part of the "secret sauce" of services like Slant 3D. All of our systems are automated. Parts are robotically removed from machines. Cameras and trained personnel check and evaluate thousands of parts per day. Again this makes the cost of labor per part much lower than with an in-house 3D printer.

You can watch the video below to see how involved it is to maintain a 3D printer farm

Material is what most people attribute to the cost of 3D Printing. And it is a big one. And two things contribute to the cost of material. Failure rate of the machines and scale of purchases.

Standard desktop 3D Printers fail about 25-50% of the time. That means that you will waste 25-50% of the material that you put into them. And that applies to a 3D Printer farm composed of desktop 3D Printers. This failure rate is due to all the factors that we have already discussed, expertise, labor, quality of the machines, etc. And it is practically unavoidable without equipment designed to operate in high-volume long-running environment.

The other contributor is Scale. Unless you are buying material literally by the truckload then your cost of material will be much higher than a service that is able to import truckloads of material. They simply have an economy-of-scale that is very difficult to achieve with a small printer farm that is dedicated to only a couple of products.

Now it is true. Services are more efficient and reliable than an in-house 3D printer farm when making large numbers of parts. But there are cases when you can and should create an in house 3D Printer farm.

1. Many Custom Parts

If you are doing custom parts for people. You should have  a printer farm. These are high margin components that you can evaluated and iterate on more quickly than any service can ship you parts. There may also be some cost advantages a well. But you should do the spreadsheet on that. You can get a quote from Slant 3D for comparison

But even here services can be of help. Slant 3D works with companies that make on-demand custom cookie cutters. And it is far easier to have Slant 3D do the printing, packing, and shipping then have the client build their own printer farm. Now they are able to focus on designing more cookie cutters.

With any business context matters. Services offer scale fast for companies that are ready to grow. In-house printer farms offer control, but very rarely cost benefits over the long term.

If you are starting a business around 3D printed products. Make sure you have a spreadsheet that takes all of these costs into account. And get a quote from us to see how they compare. Taking the stress manufacturing your product off you plate is always a huge value. That is why we started Slant 3D.

High Volume 3D Printing allows companies to produce products at any scale without the cost of tooling. For new companies and products this eliminates the high initial cost of tooling. And for companies making complex hardware, or low volumes of products 3D printing can allow them to access new markets faster and with far less risk.

So how is high volume 3D printing able to replace injection molding. There are a number of ways. Fast 3D printers or Lots of 3D Printers.

Fast 3D Printers are systems that are able to adiditvely produce parts very quickly. These are systems like HP Multi-jet Fusion (MJF) or Carbon's Digital Light Synthesis (DLS). 

​These technologies are able to produce parts very quickly with 3D printing. But they are limited in geometry and require a lot of post processing, so they remain quite expensive. Though when compared to the high up front cost of molding, these processes can be very useful in high margin products. The design freedom they offer with lattices and light-weighting are also big advantages.

3D Printing Farms, like the ones created at Slant 3D, used hundreds or thousands of 3D printers all working in parallel to create parts very quickly at scale. A single part may take an hour to produce, but with hundreds of machines working on that part, you are now making hundreds of parts per hour.

3D Printing farms are able to achieve a much greater scale and a much better cost advantage than other systems because they take advantage of scale. They source larger amounts of more common materials and high automation eliminates the labor costs that can make other processes very expensive.

While fast 3D printing systems may only be affordable compared to molding up to about 1000 parts, 3D Printing farms have achieved cost parity with molding up to 100,000 parts. And that is just by eliminating the need for molds. Long term the savings can be even greater with better supply chain management that 3D Printing allows.

It is important to understand that each manufacturing process is not a perfect substitute for any other. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. As you plan your product consider everything from design attributes to ultimate scale and production needs.

High volume 3D printing is great for getting started and scaling up. It also can provide many interesting engineering advantages. Injection molding, is great at high volumes and also provides certain engineering advantages. It is all a matter of what you product needs to be when it gets into customer's hands and your budget for making that happen.

Creating a jigs or custom fixtures on a factory floor is a laborious process. The engineer has to work up a model and then send it to the machinist who might have to send it back to the engineer for redesigns. Then when a machinable part is made then it is realized that the solution might not work. And then the cycle repeats. And the whole time money is being wasted trying to fix a problem.

​That is why we made the Mason 3D Printer

3D Printers allow new parts to be created quickly and with relatively few design constraints. This frees up man-hours and allows for quicker testing of new solutions. 


But what makes the Mason Different from the hundreds of other 3D printers on the Market. Here are three of the biggest ones.

Slant 3D is one of the Largest producers of 3D printed parts in the North America and the machines we use in our 3D printing factory are the cousins to the Mason. This means that if you made 1 part with the Mason you can make a thousand more immediately through the Slant 3D Printer Farm.

So if a designer at one line or factory creates a part for use in their area that part can quickly be produced at larger volumes to outfit all other factories and lines within a matter of days.

The Mason 3D Printer is able to print in strong and high-temp materials such as nylon and carbon-fiber filaments. It's lower temperature alternatives also retain the properties similar to ABS. So making solid and reliable parts and jigs for your factory is not a problem.

3D Printing is a skill set. And companies often can't train people to use CAD and then run the designs through the 3D Printing process. So we have made the Mason so we can do it for you. 

The Mason can come with wifi and cloud-connectivity. Backed up by Slant 3D Support Staff and designers, and customer could essentially submit a napkin-sketch to us, we could create the 3D model, and then prepare and send it to the Mason 3D Printer where it will start printing. The Client does not have to learn anything at all. And if there is ever a problem with the Printer, with the Onsite Subscription, clients can have the whole machine replaced within 2 days

Production 3D Printing is a new technology. And not everyone has interacted with it or understands what kind of pieces and features can be made with it. That is why we designed the Slant 3D Sample Brick. This 3D Printed part demonstrates many of the key features and capabilities of the additive manufacturing process. Everything from complex internal geometries to complex surface textures.

The sample Brick can be ordered for free with the form below. Just let us know where to send it and we will get it to you.

Clients may use the 3d printed sample brick as a reference for proper design of 3D printed parts. As well as a way to evaluate our high volume 3D printing processes.

Generally when designing a piece of industrial hardware or a product prototype designers have to create all the models from scratch. But there are online resources full of functional 3D models that are explicitly designed for functional use. There are also resources for custom on-demand 3D Printed parts.

McMaster supplies 3D Models for many of their hardware products. These models are provided in the .STEP format so they can me edited and integrated large CAD assemblies, or printed to use in prototyping.

Part Mason is a partner company to Slant 3D. It is a repository of 3D printable models that can be created and used in as final parts in applications. Parts can be downloaded in a number of formats from 3D Printable .STL's to editable .STEP. They can also be ordered printed at any volume, whether it be 10 or 1000. Part Mason is basically a fully digital on-demand parts store.

Finding the 3D models is a challenge by itself. But then you need a 3D Printer that can reliably print those parts. Check out the Mason 3D Printer as a resource for 3D printing functional industrial parts.