3D Printing for Mass Production (Questions)

[Rez007]

Hello,

I posted this similar question on CGSociety, but I wanted to ask here as well in case some do not see it. Does anyone have experience with doing 3D Printing for mass production? I am assuming there would be a different cost associated with making a model that would be used to print a lot of replicas. Is there a rule-of-thumb at all when pricing out a 3D design with .stl file to be used in a mass production environment? Are there any other things or recommendations that I should be aware of, or questions I should ask, upon looking into something like this?

Thank you in advance for any help!

[Rork]

From my limited experiences with 3d printing, it's all about volume.
And with that I mean volume of the object. The more material you use (= volume) the more expensive it gets.
So the first step is to optimize your model for printing, so you use the least amount of material for the best quality/strength. So wall thickness etc. is key.

After that, it's all in the numbers of the amount of objects needed to be printed.
But it's still not very cheap, specially if you enter the more expensive materials like metals and such.

If you need a LOT of stuff, it might be better to look into other means of manufacturing, like molding with plastics. It's often cheaper on the large numbers, even with all the pre-work done on the molds.

rob

[Rez007]

Hi Rork,

Thank you for the information and that is good to keep in mind. In this case, I was actually wondering what costs or other things to keep in mind while making a model for someone else (just the model, which will be used elsewhere). I was given a drawing and they want me to make it into a 3D object for printing. They will most likely print it in a mass-production type of deal, and that printing cost will be on their end. I was curious if there was a typical practice in quoting for a 3D design/model that will be printed for mass production versus the normal one-time or limited usage. Do you, or anyone, have any thoughts on that or if their are other things I should keep in mind?

Thanks Again for the Help!

[Bullit]

The problem with printing is that unless we are talking about expensive printers - and even then -what gets out of them is not the finished product, there is need to polish, fit etc.
So unless you have a business proper where scale economy can effect and you have a dozen people finishing models you'll have to get almost the same bureaucracy expenses if someone asks you about 1000 pieces of something.

For the present case, you can get a fixed pay and a pay by the number if the object is your creation. So the success of it is linked to what you get.
If they already came up with finished design it would be more difficult to convince them of paying per object produced.

Never enter a profit agreement, you have no control if they will have profit or not. At least in non public companies -those not in stock exchange - one of the secrets is to have the least profit or even a small negative result.

[Rez007]

Hi Guys,

Thank you both for the valuable information and ideas, it indeed helped me a lot. Thanks Again for the Help!