Whether you are looking to design functional prototypes with end-use materials, fabricate parts during pilot production, or manufacture end-use parts, 3D printing injection molds for benchtop and industrial machines is a cost-effective and quick way to produce parts in limited quantities.

Some of the world’s top innovators are overcoming prototyping and product validation challenges, as well as cut costs and shorten testing cycles by combining overmolding and insert molding with 3D printing.

Many businesses are turning to 3D printing to create molds for vacuum forming and thermoforming, because it offers a fast turnaround time and low price point, especially for shorter runs, custom parts, and prototype designs. 3D printing also offers unmatched design freedom to create complex and intricate molds.

Many professionals, designers, and jewelers 3D print patterns for silicone molding. Desktop 3D printers offer many benefits, including design flexibility within CAD software, high accuracy, ease of prototype modification, and quick turnaround times.

If you are prototyping smaller parts, 3D printing may be the cheapest and fastest method for creating compression molds intended for heatless applications. Multiple iterations can be made quickly with CAD software, reprinted, and then tested.

Additive manufacturing offers a solution for rapidly producing composite molds and patterns at low costs. SLA 3D printing creates parts with a very smooth surface finish, which is essential for a layup mold, and it allows for complex geometries with high precision. 

3D printing empowers you to create castable patterns in hours, cutting down on manual labor. The rapid print process, accuracy, and surface finish allow jewelers to move directly from design to production, while engineers can leverage the speed and flexibility of 3D printing without the expense of direct metal printers by using metal casting workflows.

Replacing metal tools with 3D printed plastic parts printed in-house for prototyping and low volume production can shorten development times and drive down production costs. In-house 3D printing gives the possibility for engineers to prototype metal parts and to iterate tool designs in a matter of hours, achieving complex geometries, while reducing reliance on outsourced providers.

Learn how Lush Cosmetics use their fleet of Formlabs 3D printers to create patterns for vacuum forming molds for new cosmetic designs.