Economic trade-offs of additive manufacturing integration in injection moulding process chain

Additive Manufacturing has emerged as an innovative set of novel technologies capable of replacing established manufacturing processes due to fabrication of highly complex parts and its continuous improvements of efficiency and cost effectiveness. This study is based on the idea that through the creation of synergies between additive and conventional manufacturing technologies it is possible to achieve greater cost advantages and operational benefits than by substituting injection moulding with additive manufacturing. The analysis presented explores the cost advantages that can be secured when additive manufacturing is used to support the fabrication of mould inserts for the product development phase of the injection moulding process chain. This study shows that fabrication of soft tooling by mean of AM is economically convenient with a cost reduction between 80% and 90%. Break-even points analysis based on the lot size of the product development phase is also investigated and it shows that the use of AM is cost effective up to 3400 units for the smaller geometry and up to 500 units for the larger insert geometry.