THERE are certain applications 3D printing cannot touch, and might never be able to. For a production run of hundreds of thousands of parts, for example, the option to 3D print plastic components cannot come close to competing with the speed and efficiency of an established process such as injection molding. However, in many other applications and in many different uses, 3D printing is both improving plastics manufacturing and expanding the options for plastic parts. Here are just 10 of the ways 3D printing is advancing: 1. Faster throughput : At certain scales, 3D printing is indeed an option for production, and the scale is increasing. Some 3D printers engineered for production today generate parts at rates an order of magnitude faster than what has previously been accepted. 3D Systems, for example, says production 3D printing system increases speed by a factor of 15 over previous industrial 3D printers, reducing the unit cost of a 3D printed part by 20 percent, thanks in part to the cycle time reduction.
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