Leveraging Additive Manufacturing to Reduce Costs

There is no better time to think about reducing manufacturing costs. Companies that do this stand a better chance of not just surviving but also gaining market share at the expense of those who don’t. Injection molding tooling forms a significant part of a product’s manufacturing cost. Frequent design changes complicates the problem even further as you need to again spend the same amount of money to develop a new tool. But additive manufacturing can come to the rescue here.

Here is a story of a company that saw the benefit of additive manufacturing early on. Founded in 2012, Inovus Medical is a UK-based manufacturer of medical simulation products. The company focuses on affordable and realistic laparoscopic and hysteroscopic simulators for teaching surgical skills. For the first few years they outsourced their prototyping and production to a 3D printing service bureau. Then in 2018 they invested in a 3D Systems ProX SLS 6100 production printer and started prototyping and manufacturing their products in-house.

Now may be a good time to look at your production costs and check if there are parts whose geometry and quantities lend themselves to manufacturing by additive manufacturing instead of injection molding. We can help you decide where additive manufacturing can make sense and can be leveraged to make your company more competetive. Send me a message and let’s start a conversation.