Injection Molding with Additive Manufacturing (Traditional meets Semi-Traditional)?

[manandwala]

Injection molding is great when you want to make 10,000-100,000+ parts (scale) and use a large machine with a mold that is cut out of steel or aluminum.  However, to get there requires a lot of work and high costs (up to 10,000+ in some cases) to get a mold right.  Additive manufacturing (using 3D printing to make parts) is great for low volume and prototyping but what if we could combine them?

Using 3D printing and Additive manufacturing to make a mold that can be used to demonstrate the prototype (and it is easier to change) before going the traditional injection molding route.

Mantle 3D printers are used just for this (along with Desktop Metal) and Formlabs has a great webinar on this very subject for low volume molding. 

More information here: https://www.additivemanufacturing.media/topics/moldtooling and what Nexa3D is doing with free form injection molding (combining 3D printing and additive molding found here: https://nexa3d.com/digital-tooling/)

[Michael]

You should check out Evolves Solutions unique path to high volume 3D printing using 4 color industrial printing technologies.  https://evolveadditive.com

This is good for low volume production and unique abilities to combine different material types.

[manandwala]

@Michael Evolve Solutions is exactly that and they have an interesting technology.