Should Your Company Buy a 3D Printer? In-House 3D Printing vs. Outsourcing…

By: | August 1st, 2014

Many people are aware of the benefits of 3D printing including creating quick product prototypes, lower costs, accelerated time to market, functional testing, fewer manufacturing errors, and greater confidentiality among other advantages.

Top management KNOWS how useful 3D printing is, yet most businesses still outsource 3D modeling, generally claiming financial reasons.

For example, “our prototyping volume does not justify an expensive in-house 3D printer,” is a common response.

Unbeknownst to them, the “too costly” argument doesn’t exist anymore because the 3D printing industry and 3D printing technologies have advanced so rapidly over the past few years, there is a whole slew of high-quality 3D printers at affordable prices in the market today.

Having in-house, quality 3D printing capabilities offers significant benefits for the entire product development cycle. Model creation takes hours instead of weeks; costs a fraction of outsourcing; delivers comparable or better quality and accuracy; and enables frequent iterations, speeding up design changes and ensuring quality.

3D printing also promotes creativity and innovation and allows accurate design verification before embarking on costly pre-production.

Interested in learning more about In-house 3D printing vs. outsourcing?

Download a FREE 6-page Study comparing in-house 3D printing vs. outsourcing.

Testimonials from well-respected companies around the world:

“Having an in-house Objet® 3D Printer means we can experiment more. It’s given us a lot of freedom and creative latitude. If I have an idea for something new and edgy, I can design it and have a prototype in just a few hours. If it doesn’t work out, I’ve only used an afternoon instead of a week.”

Shawn Greene, Senior Industrial Designer, Fender Instruments

“The part quality and finish are as good as the stereolithography parts we used to get from our service bureau. Andwe can have a part in just a few hours, versus several days and lots of paperwork when we had to outsource.”

– Mike Zeigle, Manager, Prototype Development Group, Trek Bicycles

“Manufacturing dental models using our Objet 3D Printer has contributed increased speed, consistency and accuracy – and enabled a new cost-effective business model.”

– Markus Dohrn, general manager, DCD Dental Consulting

Marshall Smith

Technology, engineering, and design enthusiast.

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