Silicone & Rubber Parts Production With 3D Printing

Low-volume production of soft or flexible parts can be technically challenging, costly, and slow. Many professionals use 3D printing to manufacture rapid tooling for molding and casting silicone parts, or to directly 3D print flexible parts. Desktop 3D printers offer many benefits, including design flexibility within CAD software, high accuracy, easy iterations, and quick turnaround times.

Direct Silicone 3D Printing

Silicone 40A Resin is the first accessible 100% silicone 3D printing material, using Formlabs’ patent-pending Pure Silicone Technology™. Eliminate molding and labor-intensive casting processes and 3D print pure silicone parts in-house, in a matter of hours.

With this 40A Shore durometer material, you can fabricate soft, pliable, and durable parts with a 230% elongation at break and a 12 kN/m tear strength that can withstand repeated cycles of stretching, flexing, and compression.

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Webinar

Introducing Silicone 40A Resin

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Webinar

3D Printing Pure Silicone: Applications and User Cases

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Case Study

How FINIS Prototypes Swim Goggles With 100% Silicone 3D Printing

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Case Study

3D Printing Helps Dorman Keep Pace with Automotive OEMs

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Rapid Tooling For Low Volume Silicone and Rubber Parts

Combine 3D printed rapid tooling with traditional manufacturing processes to produce limited quantities of silicones and rubber parts with a flexible, agile, scalable, and cost-efficient tooling process. You can use 3D printed molds or patterns with the following manufacturing processes:

Injection molding

Compression molding

Casting

Overmolding and insert molding

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How It Works

Step 1

Design

Design your mold in CAD. Depending on the part geometry and design, you can create a compression mold, injection-filled mold, overmold, or eggshell mold.

Step 2

3D Print

Choose the right resin from our expansive materials library and 3D print the mold on a Formlabs SLA 3D printer.

Step 3

Fill the Mold

Prepare your mold for casting by applying protective coatings and mold release. Then, prepare the silicone material of your choice and fill the mold.

Step 4

Post-Process

De-mold and trim the silicone part and post-process it if needed.

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On-Demand Webinar

How to Produce Silicone Parts With 3D Printed Tools

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White Paper

Silicone Part Production With 3D Printed Tools

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Psyonic uses silicone insert molding to create fingers for prosthetic hands.

Case Study

How PSYONIC Developed a Bionic Hand Using Additive Manufacturing

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Dame Products employs silicone insert molding to encapsulate internal hardware for customer beta prototypes.

Case Study

Silicone Overmolding of Customer Beta Prototypes

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3D Print Using Materials With Silicone-Like Properties

Replace outsourcing and molding of silicone, urethane, and rubber parts. Formlabs 3D printers and materials offers multiple alternatives to produce complex and low volume flexible, elastic, and durable prototypes and even produce end-use parts in-house in a matter of hours.

Explore Flexible and Elastic 3D Printing Materials