Compare 3D printing and plastic injection

3D printing technology is not a novel technology. It belongs to the idea and technology of the last century, but it belongs to the market of this century.

As early as the 1980s, the concept of 3D printing technology has been put forward by foreign scientists and recognized by people, and officially entered people's life in the mid-1990s. This is a rapid prototyping technology. It is a technology based on digital model files, using powder metal / plastic and other bindable materials to construct objects by printing layer by layer.
Plastic injection molding refers to the method of fully molten plastic materials stirred by screws at a certain temperature, injected into the mold cavity with high pressure, cooled and solidified to obtain molded products. The process began in the 1920s and has a development history of nearly 100 years. It is a very widely used and mature industrial manufacturing technology.
In the plastic manufacturing industry, 3D printing and injection molding are often used as PK, and there are many remarks that 3D printing is the terminator of injection molding. For manufacturers, the competitiveness of the two is also one of their most concerned topics.
So, what is the difference between 3D printing technology and injection molding?
Production mode
Injection molding process can produce standardized products at low cost and on a large scale as long as there are injection molds. Therefore, injection molding is still the best choice for traditional mass and large-scale manufacturing.
The 3D printer can directly convert any shape of the computer into a physical model automatically, quickly, directly and accurately without traditional tools, fixtures, machine tools or any molds. Thanks to the characteristics that the 3D printer is very different from the traditional injection molding process, the more complex non solid objects are, the faster the processing speed is, The lower the cost of raw materials, the better at manufacturing personalized and diversified products.
Manufacturing cost
Due to the wide availability of raw materials for injection molding and the characteristics of large-scale and rapid standardized production, it is also conducive to reducing the cost of a single product. Therefore, in terms of manufacturing cost, the cost of injection molding is much lower than that of 3D printing technology.
However, for industrial manufacturing, the real cost saving link of 3D printing is to modify the prototype. Modifying the prototype only needs to modify the CAD model and will not produce any manufacturing cost.
In injection molding, if the prototype is a steel mold, the modification cost will be relatively low, but if the aluminum alloy molding tool is used, the cost will be much higher. This is also the reason why many enterprises or individuals engaged in mold design will choose creative 3D printer for mold design and printing.
Application field
At present, the injection molding process can realize mass manufacturing of items with consistent shape, so it is very suitable for mass standardized product manufacturing.
l3D printing only needs to input three-dimensional images through the control terminal to print raw materials into physical models, and even directly manufacture parts or molds, so as to effectively shorten the product R & D cycle. 3D printers for 3D production have been widely used in maker, architectural design, mold model design and other fields.