Introduction: Injection molding is everywhere. In fact, most plastic stuff in the world today is made by injection molding. While it’s great for making a lot of stuff, traditional CNC machined metal molds are expensive and take a long time to make for low-volume production.

For prototyping and low-volume production (around 10-1000 parts), 3D printed injection molds are a time-saving and cost-effective solution. They also allow for more flexible manufacturing methods, so engineers and designers can test mold designs, make changes easily, and then iterate on designs faster and way cheaper than traditional CNC machining.

Here’s a detailed explanation of the advantages of 3D printing small batch injection molds from five aspects: what is 3D printing, the disadvantages of 3D printing, the advantages of 3D printing, typical examples of 3D small batch printing, and the challenges of 3D printing.

What is 3D Printing?

3D printing is an additive manufacturing method that directly generates objects from 3D CAD data layer by layer by adding a certain amount of material. The basic process of molding is from CAD model to accumulation molding and finally to product. The entire manufacturing process will undergo three-dimensional, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional conversion.

What are the Advantages of 3D Printing in Small Batch Production?

3D printing technology is a process of independent innovation in the industry. With the development of the times, its value will gradually be reflected, and it has great market development space. It is bound to become one of the many breakthroughs that will lead the future manufacturing industry and deserves the attention of every injection molding practitioner.

My country produces about 20% of the world’s plastic products. Molds are essential for mass production of plastic products. However, traditional mold development requires time and investment before sufficient trial production verification and market response can be obtained. This is contrary to the flexible and rapid market guidelines advocated by current agile manufacturing.

Since 3D printing technology has been widely used in the industrial field, it has matured in continuous exploration when used in the trial production of molds. It has many comparative advantages in small batch production:

Meet Any Complex Geometry

As long as there is a 3D digital model, including any CAD drawings such as CATIA, UG, CREO, etc., after being converted into STL files, 3D printing technology is very convenient for high-precision model printing, eliminating the process of manufacturing tools and fixtures, and directly processing the product, solving the problem It also saves materials and shortens time that is difficult to solve in the production process. According to professional statistics, the cost of new product development is reduced to 1/3-1/5 of traditional methods.

Use a 3D printer to print out the mold components designed with CAD software, and further verify the rationality of the structure through actual assembly, making it easy to discuss and adjust the accuracy, process, and service life of the mold.

Much faster and cheaper than traditional metal mold production; multiple mold versions can be printed at the same time; higher application options, suitable for outsourcing manufacturers; internal solution to prevent data leakage and protect intellectual property rights; injection molded The parts are of the same quality.

In fact, in some cases, metal 3D printed molds can be more expensive and take longer to make than traditional metal molds. It is not that the production of molds is more advantageous, but that it is more economical to produce the entire product using 3D printed molds.

In short, 3D printing plastic molds using a plastic (or polymer) 3D printer combined with strong and temperature-resistant materials allows companies to make their own injection molds in-house or find a service provider to quickly order them.

3D printed plastic molds can be used in small quantities of parts (100 or 10,00, depending on the material) and cost 90% less than metal molds. If budget is limited and lead times are short, then plastic 3D low-volume printing is the preferred mold manufacturing method.

Significantly Save Product and Mold Trial Production Tim

For small molds, the cost and cycle are not easy to satisfy customers. For some consumer electronic products, the launch cycle seriously affects product profits. Using 3D printing to develop molds is extremely cost-effective. The production time only depends on the size and complexity of the object. A 3D printer can produce a part or a silicone mold to verify the product in 2 to 24 hours, which is definitely a head start compared to injection molding and stamping molds.

3D printing is especially suitable for verification testing of appearance and assembly. If you are not satisfied with the early design, you only need to adjust the STL file and 3D print again, which can speed up the production of the model and enable rapid design iteration. In addition, using 3D printing to produce small batches of new products to explore the market and using 3D printing to replace some parts can also save mold development costs.

Same quality as machined molds; can make conformal cooling channels; uses less raw materials and faster than machined molds; can print multiple mold versions at one time; has higher application options, suitable for outsourcing manufacturers; prevents Data leakage, internal solution to protect intellectual property; injection molded parts have the same quality.

Compared with traditional processing molds, the advantages of 3D printing molds are speed, cost and material savings, while the design is more flexible. Taking metal 3D printing molds as an example, perhaps only medium and large enterprises would use them in the past, but now small and medium-sized mold factories are also using them. It is only a matter of time before the technology becomes popular.

In short, 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, helps these companies make better injection molding molds and tooling faster and cheaper than traditional processes. It can be said that 3D printing molds are changing the rules of the game in the mold manufacturing industry.

Delivers the Highest Quality Standards

For example, if the final product is a silicone product and a 3D printed mold is used, the silicon will not interfere with the plastic mold or cause a chemical reaction. The only thing to pay attention to is the melting point of the plastic. Some materials are even heat-resistant, making them ideal for 3D printing molds, and silicone parts can have extremely smooth surfaces and lots of detail. 3D printed molds are also strong and can be easily used multiple times, making them a premium solution for improving your production process.

Casting is a popular mold making method and now 3D printing can be used to create metal parts produced from sand molds. When 3D printing is used in this scenario, the surface effect of the printed model will be very fine, and the precise shape of the design will be left in the sand to create precise metal products.

For example, jewelry series products are mainly produced through the investment casting process, using 3D printing to make wax patterns, and then coating them into shells and firing them to obtain the cavity mold. Finally, the required metal liquid is poured into the cavity to obtain the final product.
Typical examples of 3D printing small batch injection molds.

Zetar Mold: An injection molding company located in Shanghai, China, providing rapid mold opening and small batch injection molding services. The past few years have seen a surge in demand for traditionally low-volume production. Today Zetar Mold uses xPEEK147 resin material with a Nexa3D NXE 400 3D printer to produce mold inserts, which are then assembled with components from traditional metal molds.

A complete set of molds can be produced in 12 hours, of which 8 hours are used for 3D printing and 4 hours for post-processing or curing. Prototype mold development time reduced from 4 weeks to 48 hours.

Additionally, the cost of each mold set can be reduced from $10,000 to $350. These hybrid-manufactured molds can produce more than 1,000 bottles without failure at cost savings of up to 96% over traditional metal molds. For traditional injection molding, the largest cost is the manufacturing of the mold. Only by mass-producing and selling products can the production cost of the mold be recovered.

If the product has a short life cycle or low demand, investing in machining tools may not make financial sense. At this time, making molds through 3D printing may be a better choice. Within cost control, manufacturers can expand product ranges to customization or low-volume production that was previously not economically feasible.

So, making molds with 3D printing might be a better option. The flexibility of 3D printing technology design allows for innovation and customization that was previously difficult to achieve. It can test complex prototype designs without the burden of traditional molds. The risks of expensive renovations

The rapidly growing and highly competitive injection molding industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, which is why manufacturers are looking for more efficient and cheaper ways to stay ahead of the curve.

What are the Disadvantages of 3D Printing?

Plastic molds typically have lower thermal conductivity than metal molds, resulting in longer cooling times for injection molded parts; wear out faster than metal molds; may still require post-machining processing to meet accuracy requirements; and limited mold sizes.

May take longer and cost more than machining; require more upfront design time and require higher skills; post-machining processing may still be required to meet accuracy requirements; mold sizes are limited.

What are the Challenges of 3D Printing?

Calculate the value of your investment: Mold makers are often under intense pressure from customers to build molds at the lowest price. Moldmakers must therefore accurately calculate the value of the additional investment and demonstrate it to the end customer.

Integration with traditional mold manufacturing processes: The last thing that limits the application of metal 3D printing technology in the mold field is that there is no solution to seamlessly integrate it into traditional production lines. This is also a key challenge for the application of 3D printing in mold manufacturing.

Challenges of 3D printing technology itself: When 3D printing mold inserts, you must have a very stable printing process to produce high-density parts: thereby achieving perfect surface finish after post-processing. These are the most challenging aspects of 3D printing technology itself. requirements.

Conclusion

As 3D printing technology matures and costs decrease, more and more cases are emerging where entire molds are manufactured through 3D printing. Especially for the consumer electronics industry where injection molded products change rapidly, such as mobile phones, smart wearable devices, etc.
3D printing is not a replacement for traditional manufacturing methods. Instead, 3D printing complements manufacturing by solving the limitations of traditional manufacturing methods. The application of 3D printing in injection molds is relatively mature.

The main advantages of 3D printing are cost-effectiveness, faster production speed, design flexibility and complexity, reduced risk, materials and sustainability, strength and durability, reduced waste, accessibility, and rapid prototyping. The main applications are in medical devices: automotive consumer goods: aerospace: education and research.

3D printing technology is a process of independent innovation in the industry. With the development of the times, its value will gradually be reflected, and it has great market development space. It is bound to become one of the many breakthroughs that will lead the future manufacturing industry and deserves the attention of every injection molding practitioner.