prusa, creality, bambulab these are some of the most famous 3d printer companies. There is tons of data on the internet to get started with 3d printing

The more I think about it, the more spurious your arguments gets. It's not just the molds. It's the machines. A cheap, industrial level injection molding machine is going to run mid to high five figures easy, and to be honest, I would think six figures is more likely. Sure you can keep making molds for it at $5k a pop, but those molds have a lifespan and will need to be replaced. So, let's say you're looking at starting up a production line, best case you find someone with an open machine, spend $5k on a mold, and your cost per part for 100K parts is five cents plus materials and energy usage. But how likely is that? What if you have to invest in an injection molding machine? That's another outlay that's going to drive up your costs from $0.50 to several dollars depending on how much the machine you need costs. As for iterative design, you've obviously never worked with clients nor have seen what happens when a product is released in the wild. People will request features and find problems that you and your team will have never considered, not because the features or issues are not useful, but because any team by necessity is going to be a small group of people compared to your customer base. Your customers are going to notice things that your team wouldn't even think to consider and, thanks to the internet, those people are better able to communicate with each other and the manufacturer and share their thoughts and ideas. Then there's the fact that no matter how good of a design team you have, there are times you run into issues that you just cant' account for. All of the simulations and analyses in the world can't substitute for real-life testing with actual hardware. What happens if you iterate on a design as you have said, using 3d printing, but when going to injection molding you find that there's a flaw in the design that didn't or couldn't find until you made the mold and made the parts? You're out of a mold and have just doubled your costs there plus whatever the cost of the parts you now have to write off. Recycling is an option, but if a part calls for virgin plastic (remember, even thermoplastics degrade each time you heat them up to melt them,) then those parts are a sunk cost. Also, I have to question the size and quality of the mold you get for $5k. Mold making is an art as much as it is a science from everything that I have seen, and the expertise required to make a good mold is not cheap. The Lego Group spends much more than $5k on even the simplest molds for the parts they make. Admittedly, a good part of that is the precision they require (seriously Lego bricks are marvels of precision engineering,) but a lot of it is just trying to make a mold that lasts. Sure, you could get a mold for $5k, but what good is it if the parts it produces are covered in flash and full of voids? Then there's technicians you need to run the machine and the people you need to process the parts (removing them from the sprue and getting rid of flashing for instance) You need space for all of this, and both the people and the space you need to store parts in process and finished parts cost money. Where as with 3d printing, if you design the part to not need supports, you just pop it off the build plate and you don't need to have any post processing whatsoever. The part goes straight from machine to inspection. That frees up people for other tasks or eliminates the cost altogether. Color changes are also another area where you've glossed over the issues involved with swapping colors. In a 3d printer, you pull the old color, put in the new one, purge the nozzle, and it takes about five minutes start to finish and wastes maybe a gram of filament. With an injection molding machine, you have to empty the hopper, put in the new color, and purge the entire system to make sure there's no contamination. Those parts are not going to be sellable unless you are okay with selling factory seconds. Even then, you're taking a loss on profit and still have to set up that whole logistics chain. Oh, and what if the demand for a color isn't that high? With 3d printing, you can print the parts on demand without having to slow down really. With injection molding, you have to stop the entire line to produce that new color, then again to swap back. Speaking on demand, what about customization? What about including someone's name or an image on the product? For that matter, what about Prusa? They don't use injection molding to make the parts for their printers, which blows the argument that 3d printing is only good for vase mode parts out of the water since they are running a very success business making 3d printers with 3d printers. To me, it seems like you have an axe to grind, and you come off sounding bitter and spiteful. Accusing someone of lying to their customers is a serious offense and one that could get someone sued for fraud. Furthermore, you accusing someone who's running a successful business from all appearances of lying to their customers and partners or of not knowing how their business is actually working. While I realize there's a bit of the pot calling the kettle black here, I'd kindly suggest that you if you're going to make claims like that, you back them up with some evidence. For that matter, maybe think about the number of people that have turned 3d printing niche products into successful businesses before saying that 3d printing can't compete with injection molding. At the scales he's talking about, it very obviously can.

@@thedabblingwarlock *mic drop* For real though, best reply I've seen in a while and a very thought out answer. Kudos to you!

@@daniboy_tv Thanks, though I think I tend to get a little scatterbrained at times. I definitely could have done better on making sure I didn't have any missing words or grammar issues.

@@thedabblingwarlock you are the best

@@thedabblingwarlock What about the issue of multiple moulds not being able to exist in the same workspace (for example printing two different size items in the same job)? That also seems like a downside of Injection Moulding.

Are people are expressing some confusion? What kind of responses are you getting?

@@logicalfundy e.g. "Boeing is using 3d printing to make the wings of their new airplane" Response: "Plastic wings?! that's crazy!"