Injection molding machines are able to form very detailed plastic parts, simply by squirting plastic into a mold. 3D printers squirt plastic. Why no one thought of using a 3D printer extruder to push ...

Machined tooling contributes to the majority of production costs for many small-run jobs. 3D printing can reduce the cost of plastic cores, molds, and tooling, but there are several considerations to ...

Having access to tools can greatly expand an engineer’s ability to build. As technology advances, it tends to become more accessible as it drops in price or increases user-friendliness. Once 3D ...

Mantle is launching a new series of $350,000 machines that can 3D-print the mold inserts that are used to produce injection-mold plastics. It’s hard to overstate how important this will be — I caught ...

Can small shops succeed with advanced machine tools and software? If so, how do they do it? Read on to learn the strategies that have helped Midway Swiss Turn, our 2025 Top Shops Honoree in Shopfloor ...

Vacuum casting is a technology for bridge production in the rapid prototyping industry. It is the ideal choice for low-volume manufacturing before investing in expensive hard tooling.

[Kurt Schaefer] was watching YouTube videos of people making molds for injection molding purposes using what he considered to be the toy 3018 CNC machines, and looking at the results, decided he ...

An all-electric Roboshot machine will mold a medical membrane part out of liquid silicone rubber on the show floor.