Introductory Statement

The idea of how to manufacture your product comes to your mind as you begin. Which manufacturing technique is best suited to your product? Find out today if injection molding or 3D printing is the best choice for your project by comparing the two.

Using injection molding and additive manufacturing, we will weigh time, budget, precision, and volume. See the advantages and disadvantages of both processes by following the guide below! What should you choose between injection molding and 3D printing?

what is 3D printing

If you have a product idea that you think people would want to buy, but you’re not sure if it’s feasible to manufacture, 3D printing can help.

For product owners who want to test their product idea in the market, 3D printing is a great way to do it.

3D printing is the process of building a three-dimensional object from a digital file. It is used in many different industries and applications, including medicine, aerospace, automotive and consumer products.

With rapid prototyping, or 3D printing, you can create a prototype of your product very quickly and cheaply. This lets you test the market demand for your product idea before investing in expensive production.

It’s an inexpensive way to make sure you have a viable design and get real-world feedback without having to sink a ton of money into tooling, manufacturing, or marketing.

3D printing is also useful for developing injection molded parts. It allows designers to create complex shapes that would otherwise be impossible or very expensive with traditional methods like milling or machining.

It’s also being used to help businesses to copy a ready popular product on mraket. The ability to create prototypes at a fraction of the cost of traditional manufacturing has given rise to the term “rapid prototyping.”

Techniques to choose for manufacturing

There are many benefits to using both 3D printing and injection molding, although the two processes are really different and can serve different purposes. The answer entirely depends on your needs. At first glance, injection molding appears to be more professional, but 3D printing is taking over in a big way. It allows for extremely accurate parts, as opposed to injection molding.

Rapid prototyping and production can both be streamlined with these two techniques. You will have to identify which one will have a greater impact on your manufacturing process since they both have their own advantages.

3D printing versus injection molding – what’s the difference?

Injection molding

Injection molding is a manufacturing process that involves filling a mold with molten plastic and then cooling it to create the desired object.

The process of injection molding begins with a design for a product that is then turned into a mold. The mold is made of metal or plastic and is shaped like the final product.

The next step in the process involves heating up the raw material until it melts, which happens when it reaches its melting point. At this point, the molten plastic is injected into the mold through an opening called an “injection gate”. The plastic fills all of the cavities inside of the mold and cools down to create an exact replica of what was designed on paper or CAD software.

Once cooled, the finished product can be removed from its mold using various methods such as prying or cutting off excess material around edges so it’s easier to handle when handling small parts like screws or nuts & bolts during assembly processes).

Printing 3D models

3D printing is a process that creates three-dimensional solid objects from a digital file. The 3D printer builds up the object layer by layer, using materials such as plastic, metal or ceramics. It’s known as additive manufacturing because each new layer is added to the previous one.The printer head can move along multiple axes, allowing for complex shapes to be built up layer by layer to produce a final part.

There are two main types of 3D printers: Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) machines extrude molten plastic through a nozzle onto an elevator platform, which moves down during printing; Stereolithography machines project ultraviolet light into curable liquid resins that solidify when exposed to lightThe technology has matured over the past decade to become an affordable and accessible tool for creatives in a range of industries. Designers use 3D printers to create prototypes, artists can print sculptures and large scale artworks, while engineers use them to produce parts that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to manufacture conventionally.

3D printing has many applications in product development, including rapid prototyping and manufacturing 4.0.

3D printing is especially useful for product development because it enables you to create prototypes quickly and cheaply, which means you can iterate your design more often. You can also use 3D printing to produce custom-fitted parts that are impossible to make any other way.

What is the best time to use each process?

Injection molding: how does it work?

There are a lot of things that need to be done before you can use this technology. As a matter of fact, injection molding requires specialized machines. Material is weighed into a hopper, a ram is inserted into the material, and the machine has a heating unit.

Creating injection molds is a bit expensive and limits your prototyping options: Making molds, each time, can be quite expensive if you need to make several iterations. The steel molds are usually hard to change and couldn’t be used to develop your prototype since they are made of steel.

The solution is good when it comes to producing large quantities of these products. Although injection molding is becoming more common, molds are still expensive, and the turnaround time is long.

3D printing: how to utilize it?

You can use additive manufacturing in many ways. The filament you need for 3D printing can be purchased from a 3D printer, such as an FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) printer. In addition to investing in larger and more sophisticated 3D printers, your company could also invest in a SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) 3D printer. Your company might not want to invest in an industrial 3D printer because it is too expensive.

If you prefer, you might want to consider a 3D printing service like Sculpteo, whose catalog includes 75+ different materials and finishes. All types of projects can be created with 3D printing technologies, from metal to plastic and resin. Technology choices are numerous, including Multijet Fusion, CLIP (DLS), DMLS, and 3D printing.

Using an online 3D printing service, you have to upload your design and select your technology, material, and finish. You can receive an immediate quote with our fast and easy parts ordering system.

Would you like to share your thoughts? Do you know which one to pick?

Injection molding benefits

This technique offers you the best chance to produce large quantities in a highly precise and repeatable manner. A variety of materials are available when you use plastic injection molding. Each material can be further variegated, causing it to have different properties each time. Plastic material properties and possibilities seem endless in terms of weight, cost, and flexibility.

As we have already mentioned, injection molding is suitable for mass production and specializing in creating highly detailed parts. Using injection molding, you can create parts with a lot of fine details, thanks to the high pressure of the process.

By using injection molding, strong parts can be made quite easily. The use of plastic injection will allow being filled with fillers.

3D printing benefits

Compared to traditional manufacturing techniques, additive manufacturing offers many advantages.

A 3D printer is ideal for iterations. Long before additive manufacturing became popular as a rapid prototyping technique, it was considered a fabrication technique. Now, this is not the case since the manufacturing technique has also developed into a reliable one.

Nonetheless, this manufacturing method offers the best advantages of prototyping easily and quickly. Using additive manufacturing, you can print projects for testing, then modify them using your 3D modeling software, and then print them again to verify your modifications. It will save you time and money while improving your product design due to its flexibility.

By using 3D printing, you can also reduce material waste. The 3D printing technology appears to be the winner in this category as injection molding has historically been seen as a manufacturing technique with low scrapes compared to processes such as CNC machining. You can create a whole product in 3D using only the material you need.

Aside from avoiding inventory problems, you can also reduce costs and improve storage with 3D printing. It’s totally possible to 3D print your own designs at any time! Your storage needs won’t be a problem!

With 3D printing for production, the supply chain can become dematerialized. Your company may have the opportunity to re-think its entire manufacturing process and lower its tooling investment. Is digital inventory the same as physical inventory?

Using 3D printing, your parts can be created on-demand. The parts do not have to be stored. They can be printed when needed.