Manufacturing applications where tooling requirements can form a huge part of the overall cost of a project are a great example of where low cost FDM/FFF 3d printing can be used to drastically reduce costs.
A recent project required over 80 custom forms for the creation of automotive pipework in the development of a vehicle prototype. Using a combination of our large format printing capability, customised print settings for increased geometric stability and low cost materials, customised forms were printed as the project required them.
Using a range of filaments we used the flexibility of printing on demand to apply colour coding to each part to ease identification of individual parts and specific assemblies. Our large format capabilities came in use with the largest forms being almost 1.2M in length.
Each piece used filament from our sustainable filament sources meaning the parts used up to 95% recycled plastics to create and our ongoing commitment to sustainability in 3D printing will soon introduce the ability to return parts such as these for recycling and re-use in new 3D prints.
