So I have developed a prototype of my product, and so far everyone seems to love it so I want to scale up and make at least 500 of them but I can’t really do that by printing each one.
I think the closest method I have figured would be injection molding but the problem with that seems to be the screw holes… which I guess I could drill personally or add that as a step to manufacturing, but I don’t know about any of this stuff so I was wondering if anyone had some ideas, if anyone has ramped up production on something that was previously 3d printed.
I have tried Google but it seems like all the links I find more deal with producing items in bulk USING 3d printing.
The other option is machining. Depending on the amount of $$$ you have at hand, the mold charges for injection molding may be prohibitive. I’ve CNC machined boxes for local guys because they weren’t ready to commit to molds quite yet. We did hundreds of them. So that is an option. There are threads directly tapped into the PVC material.
Machining your per part costs will be higher, but you don’t have the high initial cost of molds to deal with either.
Wow thanks for the information that gives me options and things to think about. It seems like there is a big gap in documentation from rapid-prototyping to ‘presentable product’
Sadly (not too sad, I think mine is also beautiful) this is not mine, just an example… but it was awesome, probably why it’s the top result on thingiverse.
Depending on the shapes your making, injection moulding doesn’t NEED to be expensive. You can DIY an injection moulding machine with some piping and a heating rig. It would cost less then 300$ for a DIY injector. You can buy an aluminium mould CASE for around 100$ (or machine your own case) and then you can cast a silicon mould inside your mould case. The mould case screws onto the injector, load in plastic pellets, pull down the lever and voila!
Here’s the DIY injector / extruder:
Here’s the aluminum case with silicone / epoxy mould:
I especially like the idea of casting the mould out of epoxy and/or silicone, since that theoretically means being able to 3D print a part, perform some surface finishing with acetone vapour bath and/or epoxy coating (smooth-on XTC), then reproduce it quickly with minimal hassle or tooling costs.
I’m really into helping, but I’ve got no experiance working with metal. I’d like to come learn if we find someone with the skill to machine the connectors ect… I’m into pitching in cash for any parts we’d still need. I also have some silicone left we could use to test moulds.
To the OP… You ‘could’ simply mold them, instead, with hard plastic polyurethane. The issue with that is the walls would need to be pretty thick to accomodate the very viscous epoxy. It might be tricky designing a mold that would work well.
It looks like in lieu of building a frame, one can simply modify a benchtop drill press, which may be cheaper (i.e. off craigslist) and easier. Some machining would still be involved (for the heater block), though I don’t think that’s too big of a hurdle.
Does the space have a lathe or mill?
(I’m not a member yet but have been waiting for an excuse to join).
I think it has both. I don’t know how to use either though. I hope we’re not hijacking this thread. Maybe we should start a “let’s make a plastic injection machine” thread to continue this topic.
Way cool find with the book! I’ll do a bit of searching to see if I can find a copy.
This has come up a number of times in the last few weeks alone. I’m totally down with helping out with an injection molding machine build!
We have everything needed; mills, lathe, etc. Monday evenings are machining (& robots!) nights, so come down to one of them and we can start to devise a plan.
To @Kinnik_kinnick I had thought of your idea which is why in my OP I point out that it’s pretty thin… and I think I want to keep it that way. I am developing something that goes into airplanes so the smaller the formfactor the better.
I don’t mind that the thead gets hijacked:
It keeps it at the top of the discussion which gets me more answers
It’s an awesome idea and my own question has been answered for the most part (obviously I am always interested in new other ideas)
that said, obviously people are not coming to my thread with the mindset of “I should go here to have a conversation about equipment the VHS needs” so in that sense perhaps it should have it’s own thread. I think right now it’s just being spitballed though.
For the record I would gladly contribute to this, I have been considering getting my membership for a while or even… you know… coming out. It’s just all pretty intimidating.
Injection molding sounds awesome, especially for the qty you want to produce.
I’d like to try it, too, but the startup costs are prohibitive.
In order to work up to injection molding I plan to start with pour-casting, which is already being done at VHS. Make one master, use it to make silicone molds, then use those to make final plastic parts. I can make multiple silicone molds from the original and then pour-cast batches simultaneously. Parallel production FTW!
The end game usually is either injection moulding or 3D printing the item. Cost wise, 3dp is the way to go but it’ll take a long time to get that many done. You could also crowd print the parts (something another local Kickstarter team did) but then you’d likely have quality issues.
The guys at http://signul.io started with 3D printed prototypes then did an indigogo to do injection moulding. This was after another purely 3dp project they sold. They just bought more printers to scale production. They’ve got lots of experience in this area and are local (PoCo). Trent there might be able to answer some questions about his process.
I hope we’re not hijacking this thread. Maybe we should start a “let’s make a plastic injection machine” thread to continue this topic.