With the development of plastic forming technology, in addition to the traditional molding methods, 3D printing technology, as a new forming method, has been widely used in recent years. Compared with traditional molding technology, although 3D printing has some advantages that traditional methods can’t match, it still has limitations in the development of manufacturing industry.

3D printing is a process of making 3D solid objects from a digital file, an object is created layer by layer. On one hand, it can create plastic products without making injection molds, which can obviously shorten the cycle time; on the other hand, the early stage of some complicated and changeable small parts can be completed by 3D printing. However, due to the limitation of 3D printing technology itself, which is not suitable for mass production, most plastic products are still injection molded nowadays.

Injection molding needs to invest in mold manufacturing at the early stage, which is the best choice for manufacturers who have demand for long-term production. Once the mold run mass production, the cost of the mold will be balanced soon.

Plastic injection molding is a mature molding technology compared with 3D printing. Both of them have pros and cons, which can be selected according to practical requirements. It’s the best choice if 3D printing can be used as a complement to plastic injection molding.