3D Printed iPhone Cases with Open Source files
fraemes.com
fraemes.com
They're selling iPhone cases, not a manufacturing process.
They seem to have so many different designs that 3D Printing actually appears to be a great method for this with little waste. The benefit is on-demand manufacturing. CNC could work too I suppose.
And with 3D printing hype, some people just want something that has been 3D printed, regardless of its drawbacks.
That is a fundamentally different value proposition for the consumer than injection molding. Any individual design seen here could be recreated with injection molding, but the point of this company isn't to provide you with a cell phone case, it's to provide you with any cell phone case design you want.
That's not something a company doing injection molding could offer. Molds for injection molding cost a minimum of a few grand and usually tens of thousands of dollars. You can't deliver a unique item to each customer with injection molding.
Disclaimer: I know one of the creators, and I have helped give mechanical advice over the past year. I think its a really great product. I'd be using them if I had an iPhone!
1) the designs highlighted on their page do not take advantage of the reasons why 3D printing might be chosen for this application (designs which cannot be manufactured using any other technique). In the examples provided, all could be injection molded _for example_. 2) it would seem that there are cheaper ways to get the customized designs they are building and offering customers by using a reduction process without sacrificing any of the customizability or time to market.
It seems odd to only support one phone given that they're using 3D printing to support a great deal of customization.
I'm the guy who reverse-engineered enough about LEGO to build a iPhone case with LEGO-compatible studs on the back (smallworks.com). It was the kid's idea.
injection-molding is more difficult that it looks. Yes, you can buy it as a service (we make ours locally just outside Austin).
Let's put it this way. I own several high-precision molds, a CNC mill, a membership at Techshop, and two 3d printers. I have tens of thousands of iPhone cases at my disposal, and I still think this is neat.
Not a business, but neat.
> Not a business, but neat.
That's what I was attempting to say. I spent three years working in a 3D printing lab around the turn of the century. I cannot fathom why a company (startup or otherwise) would attempt to sell products made from 3D printers that could be made with a much cheaper process. Certainly, none of our customers did at the time (or if they sent us something to build which could be milled, that's how we would do it to save time/money - actually, most of our clients would have just done it themselves).