WHY Releases some of the First 3D Printed iPhone 6 Cases

[Brian_Krassenstein]

European-based design company, WHY, has solved a problem many smartphone users may have encountered, with new smartphones rolling out but not being accompanied by a selection of quality phone cases--or cases at all. WHY has 3-D printed their flagship product, the WHYcase, which was 3D scanned, 3D printed, tested, modified, and released within seven days of the last iPhone release. The 3D printed WHYcase features a sleek, slim, transparent--but tough--design. More information on WHY, and these iPhone 6 cases can be found here: http://3dprint.com/18328/why-3d-printed-iphone-case/

Below is an example of one of the WHYcases:

[Piotr Domeracki]

Great article, many thanks
If you have any questions or feedback, do not hesitate to reach me here!

[Geoff]

Great article, many thanks
If you have any questions or feedback, do not hesitate to reach me here!

Hi Piotr,

In this ever changing market that seems to be accelerating at a pretty alarming pace, as a company in the middle of it, do you have any plans in place to put yourself above others when say, places like thingiverse have so many options for things like this, and even uploaded well before yours were out on the market? It just seems a really difficult area to break and was wondering if you guys had any big solutions that would make people say use or buy your designs over making their own like these few hunded?

http://www.thingiverse.com/search/page:1?q=iphone+6&sa=

[Piotr Domeracki]

Hi Piotr,

In this ever changing market that seems to be accelerating at a pretty alarming pace, as a company in the middle of it, do you have any plans in place to put yourself above others when say, places like thingiverse have so many options for things like this, and even uploaded well before yours were out on the market? It just seems a really difficult area to break and was wondering if you guys had any big solutions that would make people say use or buy your designs over making their own like these few hunded?

http://www.thingiverse.com/search/page:1?q=iphone+6&sa=

Hey Groff, thanks for your question!


The short answer: time to market.

The long answer:
When you’re talking about volume manufacturing of plastic parts like cases for phones, made with very strict requirements like high dimensional accuracy and using various of materials, injection molding is still the only reasonable choice.
Traditional molding tools take weeks to produce so we developed our own technology. And what exactly were we 3D-Printing? Only the most complex part of the injection molding process: inserts implemented with an innovative conformal cooling channel system. For that we needed to achieve extreme dimensional accuracy (within microns) and high injection molding stability – i.e. cooling speed and dynamic changes in pressure.

The ultimate goal of this process was to give every single WHYcase great durability and perfect transparency — and to heavily decrease the time it takes for a new product to become available to the consumer.

Cases for future phone models (not only from Apple) will be developed and tested between 3 to 7 days after launch. But our main purpose is not only to rapidly manufacture phone cases (this is only but a great scenario where to test our process and ideas). In the age of information travelling at viral speeds, these are but our first baby steps in our future plans to run

Regarding thingiverse.com,
In my career I had that opportunity to work with many different 3D printing technologies:

• For plastics: FDM and SLS
• For resins: SLA and PolyJet
• For metals: DMLS

3D printing is an amazing technology, but it’s still not developed enough to cover the requirements of the market. Lack of materials and high costs per part (in comparison to traditional ways of manufacturing products) are the two main problems with this technology IMO.

But it has its great advantages: the more complex a product is, the more manufacturing steps that are required, right? Well, 3D-Printing offers us this complexity for free, because the less we have to build, the faster the process. This inherent advantage of 3D printing turns the traditional idea of cost and manufacturability vs. reliability into cost and reliability vs. manufacturability. In other words, it opens up a whole new realm of possibilities that were excluded through traditional manufacturing; complexity is not shied away from, it is not a burden, it is welcomed. For that kind of thinking, we need a new generation of inventors, engineers, and designers.

So if you have your own FDM/FFF 3D printer and you are thinking about creating a stand for your iPhone, great choice. But when it comes to phone protection, where the armor has to fit perfectly and the techniques are much more expensive and have to be way more precise, that’s a different case

[Geoff]

Thanks for your reply Pootr, very informative.

[RAMTechRob]

If ti were easier to buy than print, I would get a nice case. This free one came out great for me.

iP6c.jpg