What makes up your 3D printing cost? It sounds like an easy question; however, the answer may not be straightforward. As it is true for most of our business, and personal life choices, the optimal scenario is often purely theoretical since the reality forces us to trade-off between several factors. Let's see some practical examples.
Easy enough, everything start with what you want to produce (i.e., the component, or components, and its technical specifications). First of all, there is the size. While "size matters" sounds like a previous century macho-style statement, that is definitely true regarding Additive Manufacturing. The volume of a build chamber is still a major constraintmost technologies, and you have to consider it carefully. Large sizes mean more printing time and -most of the time - more material, two main ingredients of your Cost per Part (CPP). Also, some 3D printing technologies need a post-processing heat treatment (e.g., sintering) which can have a significant shrinkage effect on the final part —and that is a function of the part's size: the larger the component, the higher the shrinkage effect.
The material of choice can also have a significant impact. As technology matures, material prices become more and more accessible. However, producing some materials (both plastic and metal) requires expensive machinery, influencing their cost. You may intuitively think that plastic is cheaper than metal; that is generally true, but there are some exceptions, particularly when you compare standard metal (e.g., SS316L) with high-tech co-polymers (e.g., PEEK or PEI). In this respect, another important aspect of your cost per part will be its total volume. On the one hand, you can design a big component with high complexity —and its overall volume will still be reasonable. On the other hand, a non-optimized part, even if small, can have a significant volume, thus increasing the production cost as a function of the material's cost.
Another critical component of your industrial cost is the machine usage time. Expensive equipment usually has a higher throughput, which translates into faster and cheaper prints, but their purchase cost will also be higher. Trivially, the higher the investment, the higher the hourly cost of your machine; that means you must carefully evaluate your actual production needs before making a choice. Additionally, the parameters set you use to produce your part has its weight in the equation. Printing with a low layer thickness means creating more accurate details, but this will increase the total print time you'll need, so its cost will. Also, process parameters affect the output quality of your print. For instance, surface quality will be heavily influenced by your 3D printer process parameters; depending on the part specification, that could mean a higher post-processing effort.
Right... post-processing. The set of operations you need to perform after the part has been printed can significantly impact your part's final cost. That is why post-processing is often referred to as "the necessary evil" of 3D printing. Additive Manufacturing gives you tremendous design freedom compared to traditional manufacturing techniques; nonetheless, the surfaces it produces are often rough, especially if compared with injection molding or casting. Currently, at least considering today's industrially mature technologies, post-processing is almost always needed. It can be an easy support removal operation or a more expensive heat treatment to make your part fully dense. Whichever the case, expect post-processing to be a hassle in many cases and be ready to pay for it. Aerospace companies gained unprecedented advantages through additively manufactured products, but be sure that post-processing is the most expensive chapter of their production for most of those components.
Finally, quality inspection is essential to every production process, and 3D printing is no exception. That is the end of your journey into additive manufacturing cost. While we touched base on every critical point of it, there are still hundreds of variables we didn't cite, and they all concur to build up the Cost per Part. If you don't believe us, register now to have a glimpse of what we are talking about and why we decided to develop this tool.