The rise of online on-demand manufacturing services — where customers upload a digital design file and receive their parts or prototypes in a few days — has enabled more companies to bring their products to market faster, acquire spare parts easier, and reshore essential production.
Seattle-based manufacturer Quickparts has offered on-demand manufacturing for years, using traditional manufacturing methods, such as injection molding and a variety of additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing.
Now, the company’s new express same-day and one-day service highlight how much faster parts and prototypes can be made using additive versus traditional methods. For same-day parts, the company offers additive manufacturing using selective laser sintering (SLS) technology in durable nylon. For parts the next day, there are resin 3D printing options for parts in photopolymers. By contrast, the fastest customers can have their parts injection molded is five days, and three days for machining parts.
The company says recent 3D printer advances and new manufacturing technologies made it possible for the company to turn around orders in hours instead of days, depending on the job perimeters.
As manufacturers worldwide continue to struggle with disrupted supply chains and turn to alternative manufacturing methods closer to home, companies like Quickparts and competitors, Xometry, Sculpteo, and Materialise are expanding their service offerings and global hubs.
The express service from Quickparts is only available in the US but is building local capacity in Europe, the company says. Express service is planned for the EU in early 2023. Quickparts has seven manufacturing facilities, four in the US and one each in the UK, Italy, and France, and a global network of more than 150 manufacturing partners. The company recently announced a partnership with industrial 3D printer maker Roboze.
Customers seeking parts made on Roboze machines, which specialize in engineering-grade thermoplastics, can turn to Quickparts, which has Roboze printers in several locations. Similarly, Quickparts has a new cooperation with printer maker Nexa3D, to offer their fast industrial resin 3D printing as part of the same-day express offering.
“We use a variety of high-quality printer brands for our services,” says Quickparts CEO Ziad Abou, “and we are constantly testing new options to identify the best solutions for our customers.”
License: The text of "On-Demand Part Service Offers 3D Printing as Faster Alternative to Machining or Injection Molding" by All3DP Pro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.