I've been thinking about a related question of late. How do you decide when to shift from 3D printers to molding parts? For example, I understand Prusa likely the idea of using reprap parts in their printers. However at some point, molding does become cheaper if volumes are high enough. Would Prusa be able to lower their prices if they redesigned the Mk4 to use more molded vs printed parts?
Are any of your volumes high enough to consider molded parts? Is that something you have considered?
I'm kind of curious how the math works out for various people and where the cross over point is. 3D printing is cool because something like an X1C is dirt cheap by the standards of almost any other type of production tooling (molds, machining etc). It's also inherently very flexible with almost no overhead when switching between different parts. But the material cost is much higher than commodity grade resins, the cycle times are likewise MUCH higher than molded parts (perhaps 30 seconds vs hours).
Do you think customers notice or care that the parts are 3D printed instead of molded? - of course don't answer if you think that's something between your operation and your customers. I'm just curious if people who many not be familiar with 3D printing vs the common molded plastic stuff would note the difference.
As the printers become cheaper and faster I do think we will see more low volume parts move from molding to printing. I love that the prices are cheap enough that printing production parts is even an option at reasonable prices.
ive priced it out for my stable models that im not messing with still. mold costs alone would take me approx 300 units to recover. Then on low volume runs my per unit price is still higher than my cost to print assuming printers are paid off. I can pay off a printer in about a week and change. Its a weird middle ground here.
On the units i'm still tweaking? no way.
7 versions
etc etc
the ability to rapidly take feedback, enhance and reduce my assembly time on units is worth the pain of printing. I also dont have a vendor to deal with for molds,injection, etc.
I can scale in that building to about 130 printers. roughly 350lbs of filament burn a day. Assuming the metrics hold to scale that way we're talking 5 figure $ a day in production.
look at what slant3d is doing.
https://www.slant3d.com/
for the majority. i'd guess 90% of my customers its their first 3d printed object they've ever held. I've had maybe 10 folks take me up on this path:
"oh its 3d printed? I dont want that kinda stuff." my response is simple: I will refund you 100% your cost including shipping if you dont think its worth the money you paid for it. I havent had to refund anything yet. if that day comes I will gladly do it.
One of the things I think I do that is bridging the barrier is fuzzy skin. with .1/.1 to .08/.02 you get this texture on it that just hides the layer lines really well and provides good tactile to everyday use.
I had one guy who thought it was so sturdy he wanted to video himself running it over with a UTV before mounting it. The body held up, the thin phone holder area did not.