Cast urethane molding offers a cost-effective alternative for a variety of industries and applications. It traditionally is used to bridge the gap between rapid prototyping techniques like stereolithography (SLA) and hard tooling for injection molding.
However, due to the advancements in 3D printing and materials, we are seeing more and more benefits of moving bridge production away from urethane casting and into additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, especially for smaller components.
This is because urethane casting is a very laborious and time consuming process. Manpower is required along each step of the process from building the mold to shooting the mold. Material cure time dictates how many parts can be shot per day, and molds can only handle so many shots before new ones need to be made.
Urethane will still have a place especially for larger components like panels, bumpers and things that exceed the size of 3D Printers. However, with a dwindling workforce and the skillset not being taught at trade schools as much, we think now is the time to seriously start considering AM in place of urethane.
In this blog, we’ll discuss how additive manufacturing processes such as Carbon Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) and HP Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) can replace traditional manufacturing methods.
Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is one of the most revolutionary technologies of the 21st century. It allows designers to create complex parts for a wide range of industries—aerospace and defense, medical, consumer goods, industrial equipment—at a fraction of the cost and time of standard means like forging, molding, and sculpting.
The main benefits of additive manufacturing are realized in its:
Carbon DLS with Carbon DLS technology allows for true 3D digital manufacturing, not just for prototyping but for the production of customized parts and serial production. This technology provides parts from amazing elastomeric and rigid materials.
Carbon DLS parts are best used for:
HP MJF is a new powder-based 3D printing process created by HP for scaling industrial printing volumes from prototype to production.
MJF is a digital manufacturing platform for additive manufacturing that 3D prints layers on top of molten layers, which allows the printed layers to fuse together to form strong and detailed parts quickly. This allows MJF to produce production-quality parts with different materials faster than other similar technologies. Parts are usually available in as little as 3-5 days.
HP MJF is best used for:
Our world has become a personalized, on-demand marketplace, and additive manufacturing enables us to make more things, faster, better, and more accurately than we could before. Carbon DLS and HP MJF are state-of-the-art, newer processes, and 25% faster than traditional 3D printing processes.
At the Technology House (TTH), we’ve helped customers switch urethane casting parts into 3D printed parts. Our team has:
From design to prototype to production, our team of engineers is ready to help bring your idea to life. Since 1996, the team at TTH has been at the forefront of 3D printing and additive manufacturing, and we’ve had success helping customers convert from urethane casting to additive manufacturing.
If you’re ready to do the same, contact us today!