N00b Post: 3D Printing for Business?

Hi, first time poster! I run a niche company that designs and manufactures custom products in the electronics and automotive space. And when I say niche, I mean we ship in the low thousands of units a year.

We've started exploring custom plastic products, but the volumes required by even plastic blow molding were too high for our business. Which leads us to explore 3D printing.

I have a couple questions, hopefully someone can give me answers that are not related to.. "use search"!

- How much does it cost to in materials to fabricate a plastic widget? What I've seen in my research points to $20-$25 per pound of product (excluding waste)

- Any recommendation for printing larger 3D items? What's a good printer? How long do these things last?

- Whats the story around intellectual property? As someone who sells stuff to put food on the table, protecting what amounts to "inventions" is an important part of the equation. Are 3D designs copyrightable?

Thanks, and hopefully in time I can contribute to this forum!

Sounds like a 3d printer is what you need. I don't know your parts but here are a few things to think about.

First of all, to estimate the cost of printing a "widget" you have to know how big that widget is. You can download a slicer even without owning a 3d printer, import a model and it will tell you how much material is needed. For instance, I printed (like everyone else does...lol...) a case for my iPhone when I got my printer. It cost less than $2 in filament cost but took over two hours to print. If you make 2000 units a year then you can withstand a print time of 4 hours and 38 minutes per unit if you run the printer 24/7.

Larger items take incrementally longer to print. Most of the RepRap type machines have a print size around 8x8x8 inches. It varies, but that's probably a good average. Really large items take bigger machines, more time and of course, more filament. But, filament is still relatively cheap for things smaller than 8". If you print something the size of toaster oven or larger then you might not see the same economy vs another type of manufacturing. And remember, there are still plenty of manufacturing processes that are much more suited to a number of products than 3d printing. 3d printing should not be used for "everything" in the world. It should be used where its merits make sense.

You also need to do extensive testing of products that you sell to others. 3d prints can separate at the layers and may not be good for things that are under a lot of stress. They are probably better under compression than tension or flexion. Again, it depends on what the widget is. Under the right conditions, an ABS printed part can last a long time. Many car bumpers are made of ABS and my car is 10-years old and the bumpers look perfect.

As far as intellectual property, that's no different for 3d printers than for any other manufacturing process. If you don't have permission to make something and you go ahead and do it, don't be surprised if you get a Cease and Desist Order one day. You can't copyright anything from a 3d printer but you can certainly patent it. That's a whole process in itself and dissuades many people from even trying. Many times people will just manufacture something until they get caught and hopefully have made enough money to make the risk worth it. You just don't want to build a $500K manufacturing facility to make something that you aren't sure you can defend. I have a degree in Industrial Design and I cringe when I see all of the stuff thrown on Thingiverse sometimes. Once it's out there you have no way to protect it if someone wants to take it and go patent it before you do. That's why there are Non-Disclosure Agreements in the world. Thingiverse does not have those. So if you have an idea that will change the world, please don't put it on Thingiverse. That is, unless you want to be kind and give the world a gift. Most of us would rather make some money on it though.

Again, I don't know what your product is but it sounds like it might just be the perfect combination if you were to explore 3d printing. You can buy them for less than $1000 and if you want to dabble with a very good machine, MakerFarm has one for $570 that is a really sweet deal right now for Easter. There are also dozens of other good machines. I'd say get one and explore. The worst thing that can happen is that you'll find something that it's perfect for and never even once think that you wasted your money.

Thanks for the great reply. Most of what I'm thinking is around the volume of a large bread box. Looking at it as a way to bridge the gap between small volume sales products and 10K unit products that injection molding machine can handle better. The big Makerbot can handle the breadbox size, but is about $7K and I don't even know if its any good.