Using plastic injection moulding and 3D printing purposefully: priomold shows how it’s done

When it comes to the production of plastic parts, plastic injection moulding and 3D printing are often in competition with one another. priomold is now demonstrating that the two manufacturing processes can also lead to effective solutions when used in combination.

Both processes with advantages and disadvantages

Plastic injection moulding or 3D printing? Manufacturing companies are repeatedly faced with this question. Both processes have their individual advantages and disadvantages. Often, it is therefore specific criteria that speak for or against a method.

For instance, injection moulding is particularly suitable for high volumes, often starting from as few as 500 parts. In some cases, plastic injection moulding production is worthwhile even for smaller quantities. It also offers users a very high surface quality and an almost endless selection of plastics. 3D printing, on the other hand, is ideal for complex prototypes, adjustments, and individual plastic parts. And even if you require a mechanically resilient part within three days, 3D printing is usually the better choice.

Automation through combination

priomold is now combining the two manufacturing processes into an effective application. For a self-developed automation solution, the handling system of the injection moulding machine removes the still-warm injection-moulded components from the injection mould and places them in a part holder. For parallelisation and cycle time optimisation, a linear robot picks up the components from the holder and transfers them to a testing station. In this station, the quality of the components is visually inspected before they are subsequently packed automatically into trays by an articulated-arm robot.

Part holders, trays, and grippers were developed in-house at priomold. The holder and the gripper were printed from PA12 using the SLS process in the in-house additive manufacturing department. To ensure the grippers work precisely and do not damage the injection-moulded parts, both the grippers and part holders were subsequently chemically smoothed. The trays, which are specially manufactured for specific parts, are required in large quantities of 2,000 units and are therefore produced using the injection moulding process. These trays are used by the end customer in automation to enable the further processing of the components. priomold has cleverly utilised the advantages of both processes and applied them specifically to the respective area of application.

“Through automation, we were able to reduce the cycle time by 50%, carry out production and part inspection without human intervention, and run the operation automatically in three shifts. This enormously increases the efficiency of this process chain. A win not only for us, but above all for our customers!” explains CTO and company founder Moritz Zumdick.