It might not seem like it to people that aren't familiar with injection molding, but this is an absolute game changer. Before there was no way to have a small amount of custom parts injection molded. This opens up an entire new industry.
@@jme2006 - the short answer, as also indicated by @liamalexander1719 and@802Garage, is that resin printing does not provide access to the many, many materials developed and tested for decades for injection molding. The slightly more convoluted answer is that you should use the same tech. for your prototyping as you will use for your production. Accordingly, if you are going to use injection molding for your production, you should also try to find ways to use injection molding in your prototyping. And we try to ensure that you can do just that, with the widest possible selection of materials and the most extensive design freedom achievable:-)
@@LasseStaal Working for one of the largest mold manufactures in North America, I immediately sent this video to my boss. Looking forward to seeing this scale up and put it to use! Thanks to all and best wishes from Integrity Tool and Mold.
For prototyping An end use part yes but you could easily prototype anything in resin or filament for engineering purposes. I think this is a great product though. The possibilities with it are very promising
@@shawnhicks619 not really. engieering is not only prototyping. there must be also a finished product. this way you can make those end parts without using expensive ways to make them. at the end of the day. 3d rpinting is never as strong as injection molding
@@juriaan5786 yep your right, 3D printing fills a gap for sure. I actually run a farm making rapid prototyping types for 4 local businesses. Nearly all the parts are pla as they mostly are testing cad designed parts on equipment before they move to another step in producing the part. Sometimes I’ll make 8-10 revised parts before they get everything right. Rarely I’ll be asked to resin print something but it has happened. But I think the ability to test an injection mold is a huge money savings and a game changer, and for limited production small run parts likely far far cheaper then ever making any tooling. I used to work in plastics, and worked in a mold shop in a thermoforming factory. That company brought mold making in house due to the expense. I’ll bet at this point they have 3D printers to do prototyping and some testing.
@@shawnhicks619 - great point. 3D printing - like Freeform Injection Molding - is a tool that is useful for some applications. My #1 advice is to use the tech for prototyping that you will use for production, and if you can produce your parts w. 3D printing it is a super tool. If your parts will be produced by injection molding, it is great to have a prototype tooling platform that provides the benefits of 3D printing (mainly low start-up costs, short lead-times and design freedom)
Even after leading 500+ Freeform Injection Molding client projects over the last 5 years here in the US, I am still blown away every day about what is truly possible...great summary of the value drivers behind a great tech platform Joel, Lasse, and team Nexa3D 😊
This also eliminates storage space for the molds. Often the manufacturer has a store house to hold the molds when not in use. Often customers will run a batch of say 10k parts maybe 2x per year so when not in a batxh run, you must store those molds. Mind you, now you need to occupy some of that reserved space with the dissolve bath now but much smaller space required. The avility to remove the limitations of the mold design is huge. Much more complex single parts can be made now. Awesome win!
Thanks for highlighting this aspect, @newmonengineering - first time I have met someone recognizing this benefit. The role of Freeform Injection Molding as an after-market supply chain element (e.g. for spare parts on demand and mass customization) is still being defined and explored, with a lot of white space still found on all maps:-)
The dissolving function is excellent for impossible parts that usually can not be removed due to undercuts. I was wondering about that quick 10 minute print (what printer is that, that prints so quick) and secondly, if we don't need that dissolving function, but easy 1 or 2 part molds with no undercuts, can't this mold be used, over and over again? That would also be a game changer.
The printers are Nexa3D - and they ARE fast:-) At this year's Formnext, we also demonstrated how our molds can be reused. Reach out if you need more info :-)
I just stumbled upon this video, this is awesome! takes, me back to my early years of injection molding using my own self-made machines, a customized old industrial tabletop semi-automatic air press, a couple Rabit2/ 3 air and hydraulic and one of the first Arburg machines. Since 3D printing, my injection molding machines have been idle, mainly because of the high cost of metal tooling, but this is definitely a game changer. I am considering selling the old Arburg and one of the Rabits. If anyone knows these machines give me a shout out, because it seems not many people know these names of IM equipment. Boy is highly popular brand.
This is really interesting because some manufacturers might never scale beyond 500 or 1,000 parts threshold where a $20K tool would start to make sense, but it's more interesting that the technology makes it possible to injection mode single piece parts that would be impossible with any other technology. That said, thee $6 per part tooling is not including the cost of chemicals or the disposal of the dissolved resins. Also, he mentions machining being wasteful, but the environmental impact of machining depends completely on the source of the energy. I think the environmental aspect of the technology is being overstated a bit.
Fully agree, @lavachemist. I'm from Denmark - a small country where a lot of businesses focus on very specialized niches - and this tech works very well in this kind of low-volume applications
Thats $6 per part material cost. That does not include post processing or even the labor to get to that $6 part. End part cost for the customer is probably closer to $50-100.
@@subedipatel3133 agreed, this likely isn't viable for small production runs as some are suggesting because it would make the end user parts too expensive. As well as the intended use for prototyping out the kinks before investing in a production tool though it's great, and It would suit short run bespoke projects where higher cost is expected. Dissolving away rather than having to make multipart molds to handle undercuts is a win, such as with the impeller, though if you did have a multipart 3D printed mold, I wonder if that could be used and reused in the injection molding machine they had there.
@@makers_lab, @subedipatel3133 - your points are valid, and prototyping / bridging from prototypes to injection-molded parts is definitely our sweetspot application for now. I would, however, invite you to consider how soluble inserts might substitute mold action (sliders, collapsible cores etc.) in a conventional metal tool. Key benefit of this approach is that you reduce investments in metal tooling (by eliminating the action) while at the same time reducing unit costs (by reducing the size of the parts to be printed). We see manufacturers use this approach as they scale from the prototyping to the small-volume production. Let me know if you'd be interested in hearing more.
Metal chips from machining are completely recyclable by processes well over a century old. BTW if the resins can be combined with another chemical to make the end product inert that would solve the disposal problem much as painting a disposable surface produces an inert (as far as HazMat regs are concerned) result with many paints.
Question: is it possible to take the solution of dissolved mold material and solvent then remove the solvent and reuse the mold material and print a new mold from the recovered material?
Very cool. I have used resin molds in my own DIY injection molding machine but have not seen the dissolvable resin with the thermal heat requirements to make one off parts. Very interesting.
Using a jigg-model to create molds that can be dissolved and just create new molds with the jigg-model is a nice way to keep quality from going down over time, as that jigg-model won't ever see any wear by just being used as such. AMAZING for helping people create cheap mass production molds that never go "bad". An excellent application I can see for this is headlight manufacturing.
Yes but parts that can be made with the dissolving aspect can have overhangs and internal voids that would have a mold which wouldn't release from a "master".
5:50 That is nice demostration. and nice medium production. and very cheap industrial prototypeing. I like it. can i have it as desktop tool? xD or my garage.
Sorry for the slow answer, @zacharyistrin1268. Reclaiming is possible, but reactivation is not. When working with NaOH, we have saturation levels of 20%.
I'll be happy if one of the things we do w. Freeform Injection Molding is to bring more play into the world of design and development. My personal experience with stressed-out design freeze milestones and tool reworks were not fun - and I like to think that we can take a lot of stress out of product development by enabling teams to iterate more freely without having to find that one right "freezable" solution early on.
If youre in the US, we can help you design and print these molds in house. If we cant, we know a handful more doing it too. Not linking here, if you need this youll find me.
Will be a game changer. Obviously, still got some new equipment costs and post cleanup chemicals. But, good way to do proof of concept before investing in full metal injection moulded tooling for mass production. When is this available to the public?
This is very useful for small scale testing of turbines and propellers. You can makes changes to the design, and have a new part the next day. Where as the prep and running of a CFD simulation can take much longer. Also unlike normal 3d printing you can use plastics that just aren't possible with filaments, that is a huge thing for low volume parts with complex geometry. Like custom sized medical implants. Just like the powdered metal 3d printers improved knee and hip replacements.
This feels like a game changer for small scale/prototyping applications! Though, i'm not convinced on eco friendly part - metal has been recycled for ages, and i could not find what happens to that resin and solvent. Still, very cool.
I'd love to have a dialogue about the eco friendliness, @kotiachiy. We have been looking at sustainability from a life-cycle assessment point of view, but I think the potential benefits extend well beyond the framework of a conventional LCA. For instance, it is very hard to calculate the eco benefits of NOT cutting a tool - because you realize before the cutting that your design will not work by assessing a few injection-molded parts made with FIM. Would be very interested in hearing your thoughts...
@kotiachiy One thought that I had for a 1 mol solution of NaOH + H2O is to concentrate it and market it for drain cleaner! After all, the 'solution' to pollution is 'dilution'....Right?
I really like the concept. But you would need at least 10 or so molds to tune in the process and get injection pressure and time and so on right. But then you would still be at a way cheaper price.
The xMOLD material you'll have to get from Nexa3D. Whether it works on other printers depends on wave length, peel force management and light intensity (among other things:-))
@@LasseStaal now I managed to find a real time video on Nexa3D YoutTube channel and the speed is very impressive. I also watched some of the technology description videos. It reminds me of Carbon M1, but nobody has heard of them for 6 years, so it is nice to see the technology perfected :) I'd love to see it on my own eyes, if you ever show your products in Europe. How expensive are the consumables when compared to consumer resins and something like FormLabs basic resins? Unfortunately for you, I am not a potential customer, just a curious 3d printing hobbyist :) EDIT: Carbon, Inc. is still in business, just not that active in media :)
@@xodzphone - you can, but please observe standard resin printing guidelines (including to ensure good ventilation, PPE (nitrile gloves + protective eye-wear))
That's where we can really start transforming. Injection Molding is a fantastic technology, and if we can use 3D printing to remove the key barriers that keep injection molders from prototyping we'll have done something great:-)
Question for @lasseStaal : how closely do you think this process mimics the results you would expect from metal tooling for very small parts- possibly with small wall thicknesses and living hinges? Small low-cost parts are obviously outside the scope of this process for production, but would you consider it to be a fair and accurate proving test for that type of metal tool?
As a rule of thumb, material properties are equivalent, and living hinges work very well. But when we move into the micro domain, things may start to behave differently. What are the materials you'd be looking to mold?
@@LasseStaal Thanks. I'm in the mini rather than the micro scale, so it sounds like your tech might help me with proof of concept. I will reach out to learn more. Love the opportunities this all presents..
How did you achieve this? What solvent did you use for it and what resin? I'm really curious because I don't know that many solvents that could dissolve it. AFAIK using 1MNaOH like they mention in the video wouldn't work with regular resin, or am I wrong?
Now you can send your 3d model to your manufacturers on the other side of the world, agree on the changes and iterations and they can start produce your model on the next day. KKKrazy!
Amazing to see this development of rapid prototyping used in combination with older industries. For small batch part this could save a lot of costs. Only curious what will happen to parts that need polished surfaces. 🤔
Great question, @battlemetoo. My "standard answer" - if one such exists - is to either do a light CNC post-processing (as Alpine Advanced Materials does), or include polished-surface metal inserts in the 3D-printed tools. Still way cheaper and faster than doing full-metal tool designs and procurements. Let me know if more info is desired on this topic:-)
Can that blue 3d print dissolvable material be used with any 3D printer? is it a curable resin type or filament? I mean, the material sounds very inexpensive, compared to the traditional tooling, even for prototyping. However, if this material requires to be printed on specific dedicated high-end machines, then the cost may not be easy to justify, for some manufacturing applications.
So injection molded toroidal props for drones could be a thing soon. Not to mention 3d props of any size since there aren't any under 5" 😲. This is such an amazing combination 👏👏👏
Is the dissolved polymer able to be cleaned or removed from the sodium hydroxide to allow the solvent to be reused? If not, what does the waste stream look like?
it's a great ideal and cheap enough to replace the hassle of making messy silicon molds for parts that aren't requiring precision, the prototyping engineers will love this
Oh I'm sure the precision is outstanding, I wasn't referring to it's capabilities, I was just pointing out that there are a lot of pain in the butt jobs that don't need to be precise that would still benefit from getting this machine because of ease of use. Maybe you took the remark as a knock but no I that it was a great idea. I worked making engine valves for 24 years and know how hard and expensive prototyping is when designing new designs. @@LasseStaal
I was going to knock it because it can't "scale", BUT this is a great prototyping tool. This is awesome, you can save an amazing amount of money before throwing your designs over to your die maker.
Glad you didn't, @shawnchristopher10101 - it actually scales quite nicely:-) Especially if you start combining conventional metal tool cavities and 3D-printed soluble inserts. Reach out if you'd be interested in knowing more:-)
Prototyping and customized parts, such as the ear molds. When a specific injection molded material is required in a unique form, but it can't be 3D printed, this can fill that gap. Might be expensive, but certainly less than a hand crafted or CNC alternative.
3D printing is essentially just for prototyping for injection molding , it's been used that way for 30 years for a reason. That and for mock ups This is going to be far out of reach of a home user.
@@SilvaDreams - I might feel tempted to challenge this assessment. If you already do resin printing at home (which I know quite a lot of advanced hobbyists do), you could quite easily and cheaply expand w. a low-cost desktop molder to start producing injection-molded parts. I'll be happy to provide an online live demo of the desktop set-up we have in our lab:-)
I used to own a company that had a plastic bottle as it's product. The custom design process and machining is sometimes iterative. Sometimes the part doesn't come out as you need it too when interacting with other parts. You would then have to pay to modify the mold. Which took more money and time. This wild be great for those first few thousand units to work out the kinks
This is really smart. If there is one problem for 3D printing injection-molded like parts, it's that all the resins are shit. They may be great for tabletop miniatures but they all creep under load and shatter or rip. This is basically a 3D printer to prototype in actual engineering materials. Brilliant!
Well its a tread for speed and cost since you have to wait 24 hours before you have the part but its useful till you get it right and you can make modifications to the existing design
Really cool, would be interesting with a more in depth video / review :) like does it work in any sla printer? Can you do molds for other stuff like ceramic or carbon?
Poke to schedule an online live demo, @aL3891. We are presently working ceramics with Fraunhofer and Inmatec, and I would be interested in knowing what carbon stuff you'd be aiming to mold🙂
This is super cool, but I wonder what the limit of interior cavities is? I don’t imagine it comes up that often, but if for example, you want to reduce material use to lighten apart, and therefore you want to have a cavity inside, one imagines that the system would be appropriate for that. I guess what I’m asking is, what are the limitations of the type of objects you can make with this, and how does the system help you prevent creating parts that will not have the dissolvable materials stuck inside?
Many parts could be made with sufficient draft to simply pull free manually then cut off the sprue, permitting mold reuse. Parts designed for conventional injection molding like shaft boots and cups for brake cylinder pistons etc are shapes which come to mind. Shops with metal printing capability could print their own molds for larger runs on the same injection molding machine.
Yes, but these would also work with the injection molding resins of other manufacturers. The key here is that you are not limited by the mold geometry.
if the part dissolves than how you make another part? This still falls under prototyping and traditional injection molding still needs to be done for mass production right? Am I still missing something?
You can dissolve the entire tool - but you don't have to:-) An alternative is to dissolve only that little portion which would otherwise require a slider or another mold complication and try to reuse the rest. Requires a bit more effort in the mold design phase, but may pay off down-stream🙂
That's what we are hoping for, @RaySchrantz. IM is the best tech out there for mass manufacturing, and we'd love to help make it compatible for prototyping also🙂
You know, injection molding and 3D printing actually have a lot in common, and it gives me an idea... What if you could make a 3D printer, that doubled as an injection molding machine, and could print it's own injection molds? Like all you do in injection molding is you heat plastic and inject it as a liquid into a mold. And with 3D printing you heat plastic and deposit it on a build plate. If you 3D printed a mold with a high temperature PLA, and then had a second higher pressure extruder inject it with a lower temperature plastic, then boom, 3D printing and injection molding combined into one.
Can somebody tell me if thermal expansion is a problem with this material. Usually resins have a high thermal expansion. It is anyways a nice niche product for those that want a low quantity of weird shaped plastic parts. For testing
I think I would need to know a little more before I can answer your question, @leonordin3052. We never saw problems that I could attribute to thermal expansion of the printed molds, but we may have been looking for the wrong things.
@LasseStaal My head was actually upside down, the thermal expansion of the die might compensate the thermal shrinkage of the injected plastic. But solidification shrinkage cant be solved easily if we do not use exotic plastics like PEKK.
This is good for small batches. However, injection molding is best at large volume and the price per part is very small -- pennies usually. $6 a part for injection molding isn't ideal at scale. It would be nice to see them further develop side pulls so both sides can sometimes be reused.
I hear you, @AndrewSmith-du6qn🙂 Our goal is to offer a choice between higher unit costs per shot ($6, in this case) and higher initial investments for more complex mold designs, side pulls and other complications (many times $6), but we definitely do not object to the reuse of mold parts🙂.
3D printing of molds is very fast, compared with the alternative, @darinpringle5611. Our goal is to reduce time costs in the development stage. Hope to hear also your other concerns.
We are also pretty fascinated by the need for spare parts on demand that surfaced as supply chains started falling apart during the Covid. It appears to be easier to qualify a spare part made in the original material, and w. the original process :-)
A key challenge in injection molding is how to get the part our of the mold. And the more complex the part, the bigger this challenge. In order to enable developers to do complex parts we have created a soluble 3D printable mold material that we can simply dissolve if we cannot remove the mold from the part. In those cases, the mold is one-time used. Makes sense?
I was.. "Whaaat you can have q plastic mold " Yea... didnt have a clue.. Of cause. The other stuff was very impressive as well, but the concept was pretty logical once i understand the core premise.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks, Joel and team, for sharing our story❤
Fantastic breakdown of the technology Lasse! So exciting that more people finally gets to see how groundbreaking this technology is!
Thank you very much for such a lovely conversation!
@lassestaal where is your LinkedIn?
A beautiful approach to probnlem solving. Best of luck to you guys!
Is this where Addifab ApS is today or have you exited
It might not seem like it to people that aren't familiar with injection molding, but this is an absolute game changer. Before there was no way to have a small amount of custom parts injection molded. This opens up an entire new industry.
If they're already resin printing the injection mold, why not just skip to resin printing the actual part itself?
@@jme2006 Because most current resins are notoriously fragile when compared to the many other materials available via additive processes.
@@jme2006 Try to resin print glass fiber reinforced nylon.
@@jme2006 - the short answer, as also indicated by @liamalexander1719 and@802Garage, is that resin printing does not provide access to the many, many materials developed and tested for decades for injection molding. The slightly more convoluted answer is that you should use the same tech. for your prototyping as you will use for your production. Accordingly, if you are going to use injection molding for your production, you should also try to find ways to use injection molding in your prototyping. And we try to ensure that you can do just that, with the widest possible selection of materials and the most extensive design freedom achievable:-)
This is freaking incredible... Imagine being able to recoup the dissolvable resin in some way. Full free-form, reusable injection mold tooling
A someone working with both injection-molded PPS and silicone, I have to say this is really cool.
I figured you would definitely like this!
I'd be interested in knowing more about your work, @Jons - would be cool if there were an overlap
As a mold designer, this is the coolest thing I've seen. this was a dream of mine and this man made it happen!
It took quite a teams effort to get here🙂
@@LasseStaal Working for one of the largest mold manufactures in North America, I immediately sent this video to my boss. Looking forward to seeing this scale up and put it to use! Thanks to all and best wishes from Integrity Tool and Mold.
the difference this makes to the prottyping stage of making a part is incredible. Mind blown for sure.
For prototyping An end use part yes but you could easily prototype anything in resin or filament for engineering purposes.
I think this is a great product though. The possibilities with it are very promising
@@shawnhicks619 not really. engieering is not only prototyping. there must be also a finished product. this way you can make those end parts without using expensive ways to make them. at the end of the day. 3d rpinting is never as strong as injection molding
Prototyping AND Short Run Production.
@@juriaan5786 yep your right, 3D printing fills a gap for sure. I actually run a farm making rapid prototyping types for 4 local businesses. Nearly all the parts are pla as they mostly are testing cad designed parts on equipment before they move to another step in producing the part. Sometimes I’ll make 8-10 revised parts before they get everything right. Rarely I’ll be asked to resin print something but it has happened.
But I think the ability to test an injection mold is a huge money savings and a game changer, and for limited production small run parts likely far far cheaper then ever making any tooling. I used to work in plastics, and worked in a mold shop in a thermoforming factory. That company brought mold making in house due to the expense. I’ll bet at this point they have 3D printers to do prototyping and some testing.
@@shawnhicks619 - great point. 3D printing - like Freeform Injection Molding - is a tool that is useful for some applications. My #1 advice is to use the tech for prototyping that you will use for production, and if you can produce your parts w. 3D printing it is a super tool. If your parts will be produced by injection molding, it is great to have a prototype tooling platform that provides the benefits of 3D printing (mainly low start-up costs, short lead-times and design freedom)
Even after leading 500+ Freeform Injection Molding client projects over the last 5 years here in the US, I am still blown away every day about what is truly possible...great summary of the value drivers behind a great tech platform Joel, Lasse, and team Nexa3D 😊
This is a game changer. Probably the biggest evolution of injection molding since it was invented
Wow. That a great innovation. Great work Nexa3D!
This is insane! It can dramatically cut costs for small scale manufacturing. Awesome stuff!
This would be great for making keycaps, especially those with profiles that aren't so popular.
I agree, @ShrekLaBeouf :-)
The idea of “3d-printed cores” is amazing. Time to check out the patent literature! 👍
wow that is outstanding! The change in the workaround for so many companies are exiting. Perfekt innovation!
We agree!
This also eliminates storage space for the molds. Often the manufacturer has a store house to hold the molds when not in use. Often customers will run a batch of say 10k parts maybe 2x per year so when not in a batxh run, you must store those molds. Mind you, now you need to occupy some of that reserved space with the dissolve bath now but much smaller space required. The avility to remove the limitations of the mold design is huge. Much more complex single parts can be made now. Awesome win!
Thanks for highlighting this aspect, @newmonengineering - first time I have met someone recognizing this benefit. The role of Freeform Injection Molding as an after-market supply chain element (e.g. for spare parts on demand and mass customization) is still being defined and explored, with a lot of white space still found on all maps:-)
This is truly one of the coolest new technologies I have come across. Truly amazing
The dissolving function is excellent for impossible parts that usually can not be removed due to undercuts. I was wondering about that quick 10 minute print (what printer is that, that prints so quick) and secondly, if we don't need that dissolving function, but easy 1 or 2 part molds with no undercuts, can't this mold be used, over and over again? That would also be a game changer.
The printers are Nexa3D - and they ARE fast:-) At this year's Formnext, we also demonstrated how our molds can be reused. Reach out if you need more info :-)
I just stumbled upon this video, this is awesome! takes, me back to my early years of injection molding using my own self-made machines, a customized old industrial tabletop semi-automatic air press, a couple Rabit2/ 3 air and hydraulic and one of the first Arburg machines. Since 3D printing, my injection molding machines have been idle, mainly because of the high cost of metal tooling, but this is definitely a game changer. I am considering selling the old Arburg and one of the Rabits. If anyone knows these machines give me a shout out, because it seems not many people know these names of IM equipment. Boy is highly popular brand.
Definitely worth a try, @MariolArguello :-)
This is so cool!
This is really interesting because some manufacturers might never scale beyond 500 or 1,000 parts threshold where a $20K tool would start to make sense, but it's more interesting that the technology makes it possible to injection mode single piece parts that would be impossible with any other technology.
That said, thee $6 per part tooling is not including the cost of chemicals or the disposal of the dissolved resins. Also, he mentions machining being wasteful, but the environmental impact of machining depends completely on the source of the energy. I think the environmental aspect of the technology is being overstated a bit.
Fully agree, @lavachemist. I'm from Denmark - a small country where a lot of businesses focus on very specialized niches - and this tech works very well in this kind of low-volume applications
Thats $6 per part material cost. That does not include post processing or even the labor to get to that $6 part. End part cost for the customer is probably closer to $50-100.
@@subedipatel3133 agreed, this likely isn't viable for small production runs as some are suggesting because it would make the end user parts too expensive. As well as the intended use for prototyping out the kinks before investing in a production tool though it's great, and It would suit short run bespoke projects where higher cost is expected. Dissolving away rather than having to make multipart molds to handle undercuts is a win, such as with the impeller, though if you did have a multipart 3D printed mold, I wonder if that could be used and reused in the injection molding machine they had there.
@@makers_lab, @subedipatel3133 - your points are valid, and prototyping / bridging from prototypes to injection-molded parts is definitely our sweetspot application for now. I would, however, invite you to consider how soluble inserts might substitute mold action (sliders, collapsible cores etc.) in a conventional metal tool. Key benefit of this approach is that you reduce investments in metal tooling (by eliminating the action) while at the same time reducing unit costs (by reducing the size of the parts to be printed). We see manufacturers use this approach as they scale from the prototyping to the small-volume production. Let me know if you'd be interested in hearing more.
Metal chips from machining are completely recyclable by processes well over a century old. BTW if the resins can be combined with another chemical to make the end product inert that would solve the disposal problem much as painting a disposable surface produces an inert (as far as HazMat regs are concerned) result with many paints.
My company has this tech! It’s super useful for small scale injection molding and dialing in larger molds.
Thanks for kindly sharing your experience, @isaacfortner:-)
Question: is it possible to take the solution of dissolved mold material and solvent then remove the solvent and reuse the mold material and print a new mold from the recovered material?
That would be the ultimate circular solution. We are not quite there yet, but have this goal in sight, @syranth8912
Awesome to see these hybrid applications. Thanks for the great video Joel.
Very cool. I have used resin molds in my own DIY injection molding machine but have not seen the dissolvable resin with the thermal heat requirements to make one off parts. Very interesting.
I agree, @BusterBeagle3D. When we started molding PEEK, we realized we might be onto something🙂
My old company (EnvisionTEC) worked on printable injection molds ~4 years ago. Love it.
Using a jigg-model to create molds that can be dissolved and just create new molds with the jigg-model is a nice way to keep quality from going down over time, as that jigg-model won't ever see any wear by just being used as such. AMAZING for helping people create cheap mass production molds that never go "bad". An excellent application I can see for this is headlight manufacturing.
Yes but parts that can be made with the dissolving aspect can have overhangs and internal voids that would have a mold which wouldn't release from a "master".
5:50 That is nice demostration. and nice medium production. and very cheap industrial prototypeing. I like it. can i have it as desktop tool? xD or my garage.
Absolutely - we have a complete desktop manufacturing sell available:-) Reach out if you want to know more.
Very cool material! Thanks for sharing Joel.
It kinda looks like the sand core approach to metal casting, but for plastic. genius !
I was gonna say, actually similar to engine and other cast metal part production in that the mold has to be lost after casting/
im not into injection molding but this is amazing
This is sweet satisfaction for injection molding!
This is really impressive, so clever and so easy. Need to buy some shares in this company 😊
The solvent, sodium hydroxide is basically drain cleaner or lye. Amazing.
... And now we have moved on to standard tap water, @james-wd9ib :-)
This was an interesting interview, thanks for recording this - Very cool!
Can you reclaim any of the resin after it has been dissolved away? How long can you use the acid for before needing to replace baths like IPA?
Sorry for the slow answer, @zacharyistrin1268. Reclaiming is possible, but reactivation is not. When working with NaOH, we have saturation levels of 20%.
Finally a 3d printing application that actually makes sense. :)
I would love to be able to play with this equipment. Think about dentures and prosthetics. There are so many possibilities.
I'll be happy if one of the things we do w. Freeform Injection Molding is to bring more play into the world of design and development. My personal experience with stressed-out design freeze milestones and tool reworks were not fun - and I like to think that we can take a lot of stress out of product development by enabling teams to iterate more freely without having to find that one right "freezable" solution early on.
Dang that’s slick. Perfect for prototyping and short run shops like mine.
Thanks for sharing this information! This is a very promising technology!
If youre in the US, we can help you design and print these molds in house. If we cant, we know a handful more doing it too. Not linking here, if you need this youll find me.
Will be a game changer.
Obviously, still got some new equipment costs and post cleanup chemicals.
But, good way to do proof of concept before investing in full metal injection moulded tooling for mass production.
When is this available to the public?
This is very useful for small scale testing of turbines and propellers. You can makes changes to the design, and have a new part the next day. Where as the prep and running of a CFD simulation can take much longer. Also unlike normal 3d printing you can use plastics that just aren't possible with filaments, that is a huge thing for low volume parts with complex geometry. Like custom sized medical implants. Just like the powdered metal 3d printers improved knee and hip replacements.
Probably the most interesting video I've seen this year! Wow!
Kudos to Joel and his team🙂 That man is an inspiration:-)
Very good idea!!
This feels like a game changer for small scale/prototyping applications! Though, i'm not convinced on eco friendly part - metal has been recycled for ages, and i could not find what happens to that resin and solvent. Still, very cool.
I'd love to have a dialogue about the eco friendliness, @kotiachiy. We have been looking at sustainability from a life-cycle assessment point of view, but I think the potential benefits extend well beyond the framework of a conventional LCA. For instance, it is very hard to calculate the eco benefits of NOT cutting a tool - because you realize before the cutting that your design will not work by assessing a few injection-molded parts made with FIM. Would be very interested in hearing your thoughts...
@kotiachiy One thought that I had for a 1 mol solution of NaOH + H2O is to concentrate it and market it for drain cleaner! After all, the 'solution' to pollution is 'dilution'....Right?
It's like gasoline for your car, just very little of it. Totally ordinary organic compounds.
I really like the concept. But you would need at least 10 or so molds to tune in the process and get injection pressure and time and so on right. But then you would still be at a way cheaper price.
Add a little experience, and you are down to a couple of shots per new part, @BOIIE
There are a number of directions these techniques can go. This is rather overwhelming! 😀
What ultimately becomes of all that dissolved plastic?
Depends on local regulations. We treat it as standard industrial waste to ensure that the waste stream is controlled.
Have use the 3 time for design light guid save lot of time and money.
Made 4 design of thicknes and got the finalen design before making a steel tool.
Perfect application, @simonfj123 - thanks for sharing🙂
Brilliant!
That is actually pretty amazing. I've seen how expensive molds for injection are and multi part molds even far more expensive.
This is HUGE! I have been working on something similar.
Is this a material that prints in a standard printer, or do need their printer and materials?
I love these videos showing what can be done.
The xMOLD material you'll have to get from Nexa3D. Whether it works on other printers depends on wave length, peel force management and light intensity (among other things:-))
I am very interested in how they managed to print the mold in 10 minutes.
I'd love to show you, @adameichler🙂
@@LasseStaal now I managed to find a real time video on Nexa3D YoutTube channel and the speed is very impressive. I also watched some of the technology description videos. It reminds me of Carbon M1, but nobody has heard of them for 6 years, so it is nice to see the technology perfected :) I'd love to see it on my own eyes, if you ever show your products in Europe. How expensive are the consumables when compared to consumer resins and something like FormLabs basic resins?
Unfortunately for you, I am not a potential customer, just a curious 3d printing hobbyist :)
EDIT: Carbon, Inc. is still in business, just not that active in media :)
@@LasseStaalcan we print these at home?
@@xodzphone - you can, but please observe standard resin printing guidelines (including to ensure good ventilation, PPE (nitrile gloves + protective eye-wear))
This is excellent and exactly what I was looking for!
Poke if you need anything specific to get started, @mururoa7024
Yet another step bringing us closer to Star Trek replicators. I love these types of videos.
Next level of mold designing.... 😮😊🎉❤
It's amazing how far 3D printing has came and intertwining with other manufacturing processes.
That's where we can really start transforming. Injection Molding is a fantastic technology, and if we can use 3D printing to remove the key barriers that keep injection molders from prototyping we'll have done something great:-)
You are the man, I dont care what anyone say. you are my man keep pushing forward.
I assume that you refer to Joel Telling🙂
Question for @lasseStaal : how closely do you think this process mimics the results you would expect from metal tooling for very small parts- possibly with small wall thicknesses and living hinges? Small low-cost parts are obviously outside the scope of this process for production, but would you consider it to be a fair and accurate proving test for that type of metal tool?
I'd need to know a bit more about your parts to be able to provide a definite answer. I'll be happy to connect to share info.
As a rule of thumb, material properties are equivalent, and living hinges work very well. But when we move into the micro domain, things may start to behave differently. What are the materials you'd be looking to mold?
@@LasseStaal Thanks. I'm in the mini rather than the micro scale, so it sounds like your tech might help me with proof of concept. I will reach out to learn more. Love the opportunities this all presents..
@@wacomtexas - sounds great. Will be looking forward to hearing more🙂
That's pretty cool process. I watched this in my VR headset on a huge screen while doing dishes :)
We love your productivity!
A soluable resin! I did this in the past with normal resin and it worked but it always ended up with the painful process of having to scrape it out
How did you achieve this?
What solvent did you use for it and what resin?
I'm really curious because I don't know that many solvents that could dissolve it.
AFAIK using 1MNaOH like they mention in the video wouldn't work with regular resin, or am I wrong?
@@Versette oh I never dissolved the resin, I broke out my parts with a chisel. Or when I used Casting resin I would just burn it off.
@@inventor121 I misunderstood then, sorry.
No DIY way of doing this yet then :c
I know how to achieve this, but the final part would get damaged.
Now you can send your 3d model to your manufacturers on the other side of the world, agree on the changes and iterations and they can start produce your model on the next day. KKKrazy!
... Or you can print your molds in-house, without even have to bothering to call that other-end-of-the-world supplier:-)
This is super cool :)
Amazing to see this development of rapid prototyping used in combination with older industries. For small batch part this could save a lot of costs. Only curious what will happen to parts that need polished surfaces. 🤔
Great question, @battlemetoo. My "standard answer" - if one such exists - is to either do a light CNC post-processing (as Alpine Advanced Materials does), or include polished-surface metal inserts in the 3D-printed tools. Still way cheaper and faster than doing full-metal tool designs and procurements. Let me know if more info is desired on this topic:-)
Can that blue 3d print dissolvable material be used with any 3D printer? is it a curable resin type or filament?
I mean, the material sounds very inexpensive, compared to the traditional tooling, even for prototyping. However, if this material requires to be printed on specific dedicated high-end machines, then the cost may not be easy to justify, for some manufacturing applications.
It is a curable resin. I'll be happy to provide more info - please reach out:-)
This is so super cool.
So injection molded toroidal props for drones could be a thing soon. Not to mention 3d props of any size since there aren't any under 5" 😲. This is such an amazing combination 👏👏👏
Actually already a thing, @levitatedfpv9742 - look for Kyronmax challenge winners here to see some of the first steps🙂
Is the dissolved polymer able to be cleaned or removed from the sodium hydroxide to allow the solvent to be reused? If not, what does the waste stream look like?
We have a pretty detailed waste stream description, @LunarSkittles. Would love to connect on LI to provide further info.
it's a great ideal and cheap enough to replace the hassle of making messy silicon molds for parts that aren't requiring precision, the prototyping engineers will love this
Would love to know what kind of precision you'd be aiming for, @RayOpp1 - you might be surprised at what is achievable🙂
Oh I'm sure the precision is outstanding, I wasn't referring to it's capabilities, I was just pointing out that there are a lot of pain in the butt jobs that don't need to be precise that would still benefit from getting this machine because of ease of use. Maybe you took the remark as a knock but no I that it was a great idea. I worked making engine valves for 24 years and know how hard and expensive prototyping is when designing new designs. @@LasseStaal
I personally wouldn't need the product because I'm retire, I just saw the video and that it was cool.
@@RayOpp1 - no knock taken, just curious to learn as much as I can from this thread 🙂
I was going to knock it because it can't "scale", BUT this is a great prototyping tool. This is awesome, you can save an amazing amount of money before throwing your designs over to your die maker.
Glad you didn't, @shawnchristopher10101 - it actually scales quite nicely:-) Especially if you start combining conventional metal tool cavities and 3D-printed soluble inserts. Reach out if you'd be interested in knowing more:-)
It also really good for individual makers if you don’t need to mass produce. You can simply use it for parts that need to be high strength.
Prototyping and customized parts, such as the ear molds. When a specific injection molded material is required in a unique form, but it can't be 3D printed, this can fill that gap. Might be expensive, but certainly less than a hand crafted or CNC alternative.
3D printing is essentially just for prototyping for injection molding , it's been used that way for 30 years for a reason.
That and for mock ups
This is going to be far out of reach of a home user.
@@SilvaDreams - I might feel tempted to challenge this assessment. If you already do resin printing at home (which I know quite a lot of advanced hobbyists do), you could quite easily and cheaply expand w. a low-cost desktop molder to start producing injection-molded parts. I'll be happy to provide an online live demo of the desktop set-up we have in our lab:-)
This is incredible!
Same process as lost wax casting for metal smelting. Great that someone thought of this for injection moulding.
I used to own a company that had a plastic bottle as it's product. The custom design process and machining is sometimes iterative. Sometimes the part doesn't come out as you need it too when interacting with other parts.
You would then have to pay to modify the mold. Which took more money and time. This wild be great for those first few thousand units to work out the kinks
Spot on, @joseph_n 🙂
This is an industry changer.
This is really smart. If there is one problem for 3D printing injection-molded like parts, it's that all the resins are shit. They may be great for tabletop miniatures but they all creep under load and shatter or rip. This is basically a 3D printer to prototype in actual engineering materials. Brilliant!
Well its a tread for speed and cost since you have to wait 24 hours before you have the part but its useful till you get it right and you can make modifications to the existing design
Really cool, would be interesting with a more in depth video / review :) like does it work in any sla printer? Can you do molds for other stuff like ceramic or carbon?
Poke to schedule an online live demo, @aL3891. We are presently working ceramics with Fraunhofer and Inmatec, and I would be interested in knowing what carbon stuff you'd be aiming to mold🙂
This is super cool, but I wonder what the limit of interior cavities is? I don’t imagine it comes up that often, but if for example, you want to reduce material use to lighten apart, and therefore you want to have a cavity inside, one imagines that the system would be appropriate for that. I guess what I’m asking is, what are the limitations of the type of objects you can make with this, and how does the system help you prevent creating parts that will not have the dissolvable materials stuck inside?
Many parts could be made with sufficient draft to simply pull free manually then cut off the sprue, permitting mold reuse. Parts designed for conventional injection molding like shaft boots and cups for brake cylinder pistons etc are shapes which come to mind. Shops with metal printing capability could print their own molds for larger runs on the same injection molding machine.
True, @CommOut - an attractive use case where designs and materials permit it
Yes, but these would also work with the injection molding resins of other manufacturers. The key here is that you are not limited by the mold geometry.
if the part dissolves than how you make another part? This still falls under prototyping and traditional injection molding still needs to be done for mass production right? Am I still missing something?
You can dissolve the entire tool - but you don't have to:-) An alternative is to dissolve only that little portion which would otherwise require a slider or another mold complication and try to reuse the rest. Requires a bit more effort in the mold design phase, but may pay off down-stream🙂
Wow..! This is a game changer.
really cool stuff
This is AMAZING
Could the plastic mould handle the 350 to 400 Celsius needed to injection mold PEEK?
Absolutely, @ZacDolenc.
This is seriously innovative, gonna change how everyone uses injection molding
That's what we are hoping for, @RaySchrantz. IM is the best tech out there for mass manufacturing, and we'd love to help make it compatible for prototyping also🙂
You know, injection molding and 3D printing actually have a lot in common, and it gives me an idea...
What if you could make a 3D printer, that doubled as an injection molding machine, and could print it's own injection molds?
Like all you do in injection molding is you heat plastic and inject it as a liquid into a mold. And with 3D printing you heat plastic and deposit it on a build plate.
If you 3D printed a mold with a high temperature PLA, and then had a second higher pressure extruder inject it with a lower temperature plastic, then boom, 3D printing and injection molding combined into one.
Amazing
Can somebody tell me if thermal expansion is a problem with this material. Usually resins have a high thermal expansion. It is anyways a nice niche product for those that want a low quantity of weird shaped plastic parts. For testing
I think I would need to know a little more before I can answer your question, @leonordin3052. We never saw problems that I could attribute to thermal expansion of the printed molds, but we may have been looking for the wrong things.
@LasseStaal My head was actually upside down, the thermal expansion of the die might compensate the thermal shrinkage of the injected plastic. But solidification shrinkage cant be solved easily if we do not use exotic plastics like PEKK.
This is good for small batches. However, injection molding is best at large volume and the price per part is very small -- pennies usually. $6 a part for injection molding isn't ideal at scale. It would be nice to see them further develop side pulls so both sides can sometimes be reused.
I hear you, @AndrewSmith-du6qn🙂 Our goal is to offer a choice between higher unit costs per shot ($6, in this case) and higher initial investments for more complex mold designs, side pulls and other complications (many times $6), but we definitely do not object to the reuse of mold parts🙂.
Genius
Woohoo ❤
Amazing!!!!
I hope this representative gets paid well. I'm sold.
Haha. We ❤ Lasse!
But what about time cost? We seem to be forgetting that 3d printing is slow. Also I have concerns that I can't be asked to mention but feel free to.
3D printing of molds is very fast, compared with the alternative, @darinpringle5611. Our goal is to reduce time costs in the development stage. Hope to hear also your other concerns.
Interesting how much easier it gets to prototype stuff as time progresses.
We are also pretty fascinated by the need for spare parts on demand that surfaced as supply chains started falling apart during the Covid. It appears to be easier to qualify a spare part made in the original material, and w. the original process :-)
Well done Lasse
Thanks, Nicklas. Joel did most of the heavy lifting:-)
Can we print the transparent blue part?
@xodzphone - I hope I answered your question above. Otherwise please poke again:-)
Csn someone explsin to me? So hw ist printibg the inject mold but the mold is a one time used mold?
A key challenge in injection molding is how to get the part our of the mold. And the more complex the part, the bigger this challenge. In order to enable developers to do complex parts we have created a soluble 3D printable mold material that we can simply dissolve if we cannot remove the mold from the part. In those cases, the mold is one-time used. Makes sense?
@@LasseStaal Thank you very much for your explanation - that makes a lot of sense.
I Love Nexa
what material is it? It looks like resin 3d prints
You are absolutely right🙂
I was.. "Whaaat you can have q plastic mold "
Yea... didnt have a clue..
Of cause. The other stuff was very impressive as well, but the concept was pretty logical once i understand the core premise.