3D printer for Production use

Hello All,
Newb to 3D printing and looking for some advice.
I'm interested in using a 3D printer in a production environment.
This printer should be durable/quick enough to print 60 units in a 24 hour period.
Each unit is relatively small (6 cm wide by 14 cm long) or (2.36" by 5.5").
Material would be something with a bit of flexibility (not brittle).

My understanding at the moment is that 3D printers for production use is coming along, but, not quite suitable yet.

Truly appreciate any advice/feedback.

All the best, R

My first advice would be to do this :
you grab a slicer software (say Cura)
you put the following data : printing speed 50mm/s, travel speed 80mm/s ; shells : 2 ; infill 25%; lower and upper full surfaces : 2
if you are curious about a printer you enter his printing volume, otherwise you just go with 25cm cubed
you see how many of your items you can squeeze in the print bed
this will give you the print time for the items on the bed
you see if in 24 hours you can do enough prints to reach 60 items.

If you can't, that will just be a reminder that 3D printing is not a process designed for mass production.

If you can, I would make sure you add enough downtime to ensure that you have a certain degree of margin and at least 1 or 2 more runs a day : shit happens.

Don't believe any builder that tells you you can print faster than 60mm/s on a FDM 3D printer : yes you can but the quality is so awful it's not worth mentioning.

Why not get a mold created and go the injection molding route?

Thank you very much LambdaFF - much appreciated.
Agreed - 3D printers don't seem to be quite capable of mass production yet.
I guess I am not quite ready to give up on the idea though...
I would not be adverse to reducing the output volume and simply increase the number of printers (depends on the cost of each printer).
Are you aware of any relatively robust 3D printers for under $5000 US?

Appreciate your advice, R

Hello Wachuko,
Thank you for the response - appreciate your interest.
Yes, one could go with injection molds, but, such route reduces the quality as each product is slightly different.
3D printing is the optimum choice, but, the tech doesn't seem to be quite there yet - I expect soon..

All the best, R

weeellll, there is a company that sells stacked shelves of multiple printers for production purposes.

However - and this is something I don't think any other printer does - the hyrel can use multiple heads and print a model simultaneously with each head.
This is NOT the same as having several models on a the printbed of standard printer.

Given the size of your models it could probably print two simultaneously, maybe 3 - making it at least twice as fast as most other printers.
Have a word with davos, as I don't have the machine specs memorised :-)

But it's probably the closest thing to production capable around at the moment.

Drop an stl of the model over and I can tell you roughtly how long it would take to print (obviously, shells, printspeed, infill etc have a marked impact on actual print time.)

But it'd give you a better idea what to aim for.

On the Hyrel, Yoke positions 1, 2 and 4 are each 70mm apart, so three at a time would work if they were single material/color builds.

We typically print ABS and most materials at about 1800mm/min, or 30mm/sec. If you wanted 20 runs in 24 hours, that's about an hour per run. Depending on your model, infill percentage and layer height, this might be doable, but I think that's a little ambitious.

PM me if you'd like more information. See the video in my signature.

Thanks,
Davo

Hello Davos and Curious Aardvark,
Just a quick thank you for your advice - greatly appreciated.
Hopefully I can return the favor one of these days.

Currently looking at Hyrel options - very responsive, helpful group over there - top notch!

Thank you, R

Please take a look at our (Fusion3) 3D printer - the F306. We have a number of customers who are using the printer instead of going the injection molding route.
Large build area (12x12x12") allows for many parts to be printed at one time (arranged on the bed). Combined with our speed and great print resolution, you'll get great results.
The single extruder printer is $3975, we can also do a 'high flow' (larger nozzle) version which sacrifices some print quality for even greater speed.

i think you should take alook on Ira3D, they said it can at 200-400mm/s and still maintain good quality, but, honestly, i didn't find the video or information bout it so far. it's just opinion or FYI.;)