Reply To: Flexible Resin – Printing Tires

[phaidknott 7023xp 0]

Interesting…. 4Ground seem to have come to the same conclusion (although the production minis are still going to be priced at the high end of typical resin minis market, rather than the cheaper end of things). They also cite things like not needing to maintain as high a stock level (although you can’t just treat it as “just in time” production), no need to make/store molds etc.

They do seem to think it’s the way forwards for the smaller producer (ie print run in the 100s rather than 1000s), but most of what I type is reading between the lines of interviews they have done. They’ve got seven SLA printers running, and cost the production costs on man hours to keep a printer running (so if one person can keep seven printers running, then the manpower is now 1/7th of running a single printer).

The other tricky aspect is the resin used (most of the resins that are “off the shelf” aren’t suitable, and they had to formulate their own bespoke one).

But it’s good to see someone else experimenting with this new technology, anything that gives us better minis (and lowers the risk to SME companies) is a good thing 🙂