One of the biggest advantages that 3D printing has over Injection Molding is its ability to save you money on both upfront and long term costs. By eliminating molds and warehousing, as well as, reducing waste, 3D printing drastically reduces the overhead costs of traditional manufacturing. Let's go a little deeper into each of these cost saving benefits.

For starters, the biggest way 3D printing will save you money is by eliminating the cost of molds. Even a small, single cavity mold will usually costs anywhere from $1,000-$5,000, whereas a larger, more complex mold can be upwards of $80,000. 3D printing completely eliminates these massive upfront costs. So, rather than having to sell hundreds, or even thousands of parts just to make back the money spent on molds, you can immediately begin making profit with additive manufacturing.  

With 3D printing being a fully digital process, you never have to worry about storing any of your product. Parts can simply be printed on demand, providing you have the infrastructure in place to be able to address spikes when they happen. 3D printing eliminates the cost of inventory because you don't have to pay for a warehouse to store 10,000 parts for 10 years while they get sold. You also don't have to keep a surplus of parts around in case that part goes obsolete, which is another huge cost saving benefit. Since parts aren't produced until they are needed, you eliminate the loses from obsolescence, which makes up a significant percentage of spare part costs.

All in all, additive manufacturing ends up being the much cheaper option when it comes to mass production manufacturing. The elimination of molds, reducing of waste, and lack of need for warehousing ends up saving you a lot of money, both upfront and long term. If you are looking for a cheaper alternative to traditional manufacturing, begin looking into additive manufacturing, and there's no better place to start than right here, at Slant3D.
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Happy Savings!

There are a variety of different materials used in 3D printing, including PLA, PETG, ABS, and TPU as the most common. Each of these materials have their own advantages and disadvantages when it comes to deciding which material is best for your specific project. Today, we will go over these materials and hopefully get you on the right track.

Next, we have Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, or ABS, which is another thermoplastic polymer typically used in manufacturing processes. ABS was the "original" 3D printing material because it is the most common thermoplastic available in the world. For a short period of time, it was the most popular material used in 3D printing, however its reign was short lived due to it being difficult to use. ABS is known to suffer from pretty bad warping which is detrimental when it comes to 3D printing. It also has a high forming temperature which means you have to have really high temperatures on your printing bed in order to support it. ABS can also be fairly dangerous due to the outgassing, so it can potentially become harmful if you are printing a high volume of parts.

Lastly, Thermoplastic Polyurethane, or TPU, is often referred to as the bridge between rubber and plastics. It is an extremely flexible material that be somewhat difficult to work with at times unless you are using a direct drive 3D printer. This is due to the fact that TPU pulls water out of the air, which can cause the material to bubble up, leading to a jammed extruder. It generally runs at a higher temperature than other materials, but it results in a very durable and chemical resistant finished product. TPU is great if you are looking to make a product that is more malleable and has softer properties.

Make sure to check out our YouTube video covering this same topic.

In our last blog post, we went over some of the primary printing processes used in additive manufacturing. Today, we will cover why we decided to go with an FDM printing process here at Slant3D.

So hopefully this post shed some light on why we decided to use an FDM printing process here at Slant3D. The existing materials base makes it an incredibly cost-effective and convenient process. The ease of scaling up to produce hundreds, or even thousands, of parts at one time. And, the ability to pull finished parts right off the printer and ship them without having to spend hours post processing. These are just a few of the many reasons why FDM printing is the best option when it comes to mass production 3d printing, and why we have chosen this process here at Slant3D. Dont forget to check out our video on this same topic down below.

When it comes to 3d printing, there are typically 3 primary printing processes that come to mind; FDM, Resin Based, and Powder Jetting. In this blog post, we will go over the strengths and weaknesses of each of these processes.

Any type of resin based 3​d printing, whether it be DLP (Digital Light Processing) or SLA (Stereolithography), typically all function under the same principle, using a light source to cure a liquid resin into a hardened plastic. In SLA 3d printing, a build platform is lowered into a thin layer of resin where a laser is used to draw out the first layer of the object. The laser hardens the resin and the build platform is then raised back up so a new layer of resin can be added. This process repeats until, layer by layer, the object is finished.

Much like resin based printing, powder jetting has many different types of processes that fall underneath it but they all work under the same basic concept. An industrial printhead selectively deposits a liquid binding agent onto a thin layer of powder. This powder then hardens and a new layer of powder is added so the printhead can deposit more binding agent and process repeats layer by layer until the object you are printing is finished. When its all said and done, your part is embedded in the powder like a fossil in the dirt. Then, you dig out your finished product, wash off the excess powder, and then put the parts through a ​post-curing process to strengthen them. 

In conclusion, each of these printing processes have their fair share of advantages and disadvantages. Some, like FDM, are better suited for large scale production. Whereas others, like resin based, are more suited for small scale, high quality parts. Selecting the right printing process comes down to accessing the advantages and limitations of each technology to your products most important requirements. Although there is no one size fits all solution, properly utilizing 3D printing technology throughout your product's development will reduce design risk and, ultimately, result in better products.

​Happy printing.

One of the strongest qualities of 3d printing, particularly FDM 3d printing, is it's ability to take the same material, with the same properties, but make the part itself behave very differently.

For example, both products in the above image are made from the exact same material, TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane). They are both a 95A durometer TPU which is a fairly reasonable stiffness, about as stiff as a pencil eraser. However, when printed, the product on the left came out about the same stiffness as a pencil eraser, whereas the one on the right is much more flexible and soft (Figure B). The reason behind this is is because with 3d printing we're actually able to change the macroscopic structure of the part, thus allowing them to have very different qualities. In Figure C, you can see how the product consists of a lot of little strings stacked up on top of one another, making it very soft and flexible.

Generally speaking, building a print farm can be a pretty expensive investment. Starting out, you would need to buy anywhere from 10-20 machines and scale up your farm from there. But, 10 machines, at around $500 each, would result in pretty high upfront costs. So how can you get the scale of the printing farm to where you can produce 100's or even 1000's of pieces, without actually having to buy all of those machines?

Well that's why 3D printing farm services such as Slant 3D were created, so that as businesses are scaling up, instead of having to invest all that money into machines, they can just use the service to grow their customer base and be able to support those orders as they increase. Then once they hit those milestones and generate more revenue, they can then begin to buy more machines and begin printing in-house. This is a huge benefit because an internal print farm gives you much quicker control of the design, as well as, allows you to control your supply base. This limits the amount of delays and supply chain issues you may run into otherwise.

Slant 3D has souced and created range of materials to suit different requirements, from flexible to castable, we have engineered materials to match the requirements of the market.

Our range covers industries such as ESD safe, aerospace, automotive, industrial, fashion and more. Each material has a unique quality, making it ideal for the individual industry.
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Another option with 3D printing is to also fill your product with infill.  The reason for this is because it has the durability of a solid object but it is more cost effective because it uses less plastic.  Inside the product would look like a honeycomb pattern that is able to maintain excellent structural integrity but also be light weight and use less material. Injection molding cannot do this. ​

So if you have a solid part, we suggest that 3D printing is probably the right direction for you.  With 3D printing your product can be ready to ship directly off the printer rather than having a multi-step manufacturing process.  With 3D printing there is also no need to redesign your product in order to prevent deformation because that issue is no one that 3D printing has.  We are going to continue the conversation about 3D Printing versus Injection Molding in future blogs to come so make sure you are following Slant 3D on social media to see when we post our next blog post on the topic. ​

Many people think that 3D printing is more expensive than injection molding, but that is actually false. 3D printing materials costs break even with injection molding materials at about a quarter of a million parts, but whether it is cheaper as a whole than injection molding is really dependent upon your specific project. ​​

Now 3D printing can produce the same volume of parts as injection molding. At Slant 3D, we produce thousands of pieces for different clients, more cheaply than injection molding. The reason for that is because we don't have the mold cost up front, so a client is able to just email us a design and then we can produce up to hundreds of thousands parts. The per part cost is higher than injection molding when operating at lower volumes, but if you're making a quarter million small parts, 3D printing can make them for the same per part cost as injection molding. ​