With the advance in 3D printing technologies and materials, more and more big brands start using 3D printing for their jigs and fixtures to reduce tooling cost and production cost as well as shorten the lead-time for iteration.
Wide range of materials are available in the market that suit your requirements such as rigid, toughness, strength, flexibility, heat resistance, chemical resistance, biocompatibility and many more. 3D printing materials no longer constraint to PLA only. You can narrow down your choice of 3D printing technologies by listing down your materials required or narrowing down your materials selection by the listing down the part properties and 3D printing technologies required.
3D printing provides flexibility and reduce modification lead-time for any product design changes. Designers and engineers can easily modify the jig and fixture design to suit the product changes and immediately send for 3D printing without modification on the tooling or purchasing new raw materials if the changes do not allow modification on existing jig and fixtures.
Print on demand the tools only when you need them is another thumb up for no minimum of quantity requirement and no inventory cost needed. When the jig and fixture worn out or broken, you can easily replace with a new tool in hours.
3D printing allows engineers to design and customize the jigs and fixtures with better ergonomics for safety, better handling, better functionality as well as weight reduction design.
Case studies:
Digitisation of Hard Desk Board
Fabricating the above jig using traditional injection molding, the ROI for the tooling and the injection molding machine for low volume quantity is not feasible. For CNC machining the jig, the steel cost of the raw material and machining process time is also not feasible. For this kind of jig and fixture, it is recommended to use 3D printing for on-demand print.
- Using reverse engineering of existing physical jig and create the 3D model in a day
- Approximate 12 hours of 3D printing time
- Weight reduction by 60%
- Cost per jig approximate SGD 60-70
- Printed in ESD PETG certified material; passed all tests
Hearing Aid Fixture for internal wiring insert
Due to the small and precise design, fabricating this fixture using traditional injection molding, precision tooling is required and due to hearing aid is customized to individual user, it is not feasible to create tooling for each user. Therefore, 3D printing is recommended for customize and personalize jig and fixture.
With the jig required for optimal performance at elevated temperature (above 200ᵒC), using Figure 4 HI TEMP 300-AMB material is another plus point for choosing 3D printing.
Figure 4 HI TEMP 300-AMB is an ultra-high temperature plastic for use in applications requiring high heat resistance. It is the industry’s highest heat-resistant material with heat deflection temperature of over 300 °C at both low and high stress (HDT at 0.455 and 1.82 MPa).
Using Figure 4 HI TEMP 300-AMB material with a layer resolution of 50µm and producing 4 parts in a tray.
- Chemical stability requirement
- Heat resistance for heat environment of 100ᵒC
- Approximately 1 hour 6 min of 3D printing time
- Material used per part is 9.88 gram
ECS – Your Preferred 3D Printing Partner for Jigs & Fixtures
We work with big Fortune 500 companies in the region to provide and help them to digitize their manufacturing aids and tooling. Our professional team provides End-to-End Solutions as early as 3D model creation to design optimizing advice for 3D printing. We walk through the testing phase with customers to get their tool tested on the manufacturing floor.