By Tony Slavik, Applications Engineering Manager at FATHOM
Additive manufacturing (AM) has been rapidly evolving into a powerful means of production. The additive technologies most commonly used for production of plastic parts include Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), and Multi Jet Fusion (MJF). To effectively utilize AM to produce end-use parts, it is critical to understand its strengths and how to best leverage these unique benefits. The break-even point of AM compared to injection molding (IM) was once a few hundred parts but is now pushing into the thousands with trends showing the cut-off point even higher in the coming years. Although, if you are projecting production volumes in the 10’s, 100’s of thousands, or even millions, AM can still prove to be a strong option for manufacturing throughout the early stages of production. AM has many other benefits not explicit to part price comparisons. Click through to learn about three practical reasons why you should be utilizing AM today—(1) direct part replacement, (2) part consolidation, and (3) geometry optimization. Read more about how to overcome the constraints of traditional manufacturing methods to reduce costs, increase speed, and improve function.
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