Hey James and all,
Two good videos on the topic by someone having strong views on the topic: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmK-1qVu7qc - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF3XPORAF0A (and this guy said there are more coming on this topic).
If I summarize what I got from these videos, I would say: - an injection mold cost about 15k - this is not worth it if you wanna propose multiple variants of your product (meaning multiple molds) - FDM is great until you are tired of problems of supports and associated print defaults (i.e. if you can print without supports, like your case, then FDM is the best solution) - SLA is cool but all the associated chemicals is a pain and you still have lots of manual postprocessing in many cases - SLS is great to have mostly fully automated postprocessing, big batches, unlimited possibilities of 3d design (no more overhang problems, you can print mostly all you can dream of - printing in-house is the only option he is ready to consider because it gives him unlimited possibilities of customization (test new products or variants) and production on-demand
I'm not saying this person is right, but he has studied the topic quite a lot.
I think the decision also comes down to: - are you willing to consider crowd-sourcing (paying for the associated costs?) or would you prefer to print everything in-house or pay for a supplier? - how much money are you ready to invest up-front? both in terms of hardware and in terms of stocking parts - how many parts do you really need per week / month / year ? If you do not mind to spread the production across the year, it could favor some scenarii - do you plan to propose customizations (color, text, ...) or other versions (other Pi, internal battery needing more space, ...) ? This is THE strong argument for in-house production with 3D printing, being able to quickly start a new product, and mostly not having to invest a penny - are you happy with FDM prints quality, do you plan to need something else?
HTH
Benoît
PS : I have a FDM printer ready for you, barely used ; quick computation gives that it is easy to produce at least 20 cases (case + lid) per day, 600 per month. And investing in a second machine to double production speed is not a concern for me. I would happily contribute my time on this.
Le jeu. 5 déc. 2024 à 23:32, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com a écrit :
Hey All
The Wikipedia store has once again sold out of Internet-in-a-Box. We at Wiki Project Med have used up all our 3D printed cases and are needing to get more, maybe a thousand or two. Thoughts on best way to do this? We had a volunteer print our prior 500 cases.
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian _______________________________________________ Offline-l mailing list -- offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to offline-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org