Why should I be 3D printing? - Quantity over Quality

By reducing the cost of producing a new part, this gives designers a chance to be more creative and take risks in part design. When a new part costs $1 to 3D print, ideas which seem stupid at first can be tested. If a prototype must be outsourced and produced at high cost, only the most conventional, predictable parts would be made.

In the book Atomic Habits, which I highly recommend, James Clear mentions an example of a photography class which was split into two groups. One was graded on the number of photographs they produced, and the other was graded based on the quality of their photographs. By the end of the term, the best photos were found in the group which produced as many photos as they could.

3D printing allows us to be in the quantity group. If you design your part for mass manufacturing, you will spend days or weeks perfecting a single model to produce a single mould. If you design for 3D printing, you can iterate endlessly until you find the perfect version of your design.

In my personal experience, it is far easier to produce a dozen prototypes than to stare at a design for weeks trying to perfect it. The rapid prototyping model allows each design to improve on the previous one. It also reveals aspects of the part design which are hard to see on a computer – like how a part feels, how flexible it is and how the surface finish looks in natural lighting. This is especially true if you want someone else’s opinion, showing a customer, a CAD model won’t reveal much. Sometimes the changes a product needs can only be noticed through prototyping and testing.