Low Volume Production With 3D Printing

2019-01-13

I bought a Prusa i3 MK3 3D printer to do some prototyping and low volume production. After doing some rapid prototyping, I came up with a product for organizing dewalt batteries. The polished dual iteration is pictured below.

The product was designed using parametric models in FreeCAD, stress calcs and costing with python, sliced with Slic3r PE, ran with Printrun or Octoprint all on a Debian desktop. Production went smooth until the printer became increasingly erratic on the first layer. Overall, 3D printing could be a viable production method if you can get hobby pricing AND reliability. Reliability still needs work.

A full report on the design can be found in my mechanical portfolio.