Die Casting Vs 3D Printing – What’s The Difference Between 3D Printing And Die Casting

Die Casting Vs 3D Printing – Difference Between 3D Printing And Die Casting

1. Investment costs

With die casting, the cost of the die requires a significant upfront investment, while 3D printing has minimal upfront costs. On the other hand, the unit price for printing is much higher than die casting.

2. Manufacturing ways 

Compared to die casting, 3D printing is a much newer technology, only becoming commercially viable around the mid-1980s. Die casting, on the other hand, is an established manufacturing process. Die casting involves the injection of liquid metal into a mold, resulting in a faster cycle time from 30 to 45 seconds than printing. Die casting is more like sculpting. 3D printing is a process in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer control to create a three-dimensional object. The materials such as powder grains being fused together or liquid molecules are added together. As far as cost, this means die casting creates more waste, which increases the cost for removing the waste. 

No need for traditional tools, fixtures, machine tools or any molds, 3D printing technology can automatically, quickly, directly and accurately convert the three-dimensional design in the computer into a physical model, and even directly manufacture parts or molds, thereby effectively shortening the product development cycle. Die casting is not without similar capabilities, however.

Advantages Of 3D Printing 

● The biggest advantage of 3D printing is time savings. 3D printing is faster than traditional manufacturing. If you want to go down the traditional manufacturing route to manufacture a product, it will take drastically more time than 3D printing a single object. Because tooling takes an awful long amount of time work versus 3D printing where you can just reproduce one object overnight now. That’s not to say that 3d printing is faster than mass production but it becomes ready quicker, you can just produce one object on a 3D printer overnight whereas with mold die casting for example, you need to do that your tooling and get it up and running which takes a very long time, but then once it is up and running you can produce parts very quickly.

● 3D Printing doesn’t need a die for every part which needs to be made. Any part can be created by programming the printer appropriately. No mater how big or small the part is. When the parts are very complicated, you don’t want to invest money and time in making a mold for a great amount of small parts. Similarly, many parts may be too complex to make with a single cast but are easier to make with a 3D printer. 

● 3D printing has little to no geometric limitations. Now some objects are very complex and there’s not many other ways you could manufacture them than 3D printing. 3D printing is a layer by layer process, it’s otherwise known as additive manufacturing and doesn’t have any inherit geometric limitations that other more traditional manufacturing processes might, which is why you’re seeing many aerospace companies now adopting 3D printing in metal for end-use parts. Because they can get the weight down while maintaining strength all due to the fact that they don’t have to adhere to the same geometric limitations that they did in the past.

● It’s cheaper than mass production but only if you want a certain number of parts. We’re talking about comparing to die casting with 3D printing. Getting one or two or three is much lower cost than producing a tool for die casting. Now that tool might be useful producing hundreds of thousands of identical parts but if you don’t want that many it’s a wasted sunk cost and again it will take a very long time to get you there. So 3D printing in the early stages of product development is far more cost-effective than going through tooling and producing mass production molds and producing parts that way. 3D printing also generally is cheaper than CNC processes where you might start with metals and subtractive Lee machine them away, 3d printing tends to be a bit cheaper than those processes.

Advantages Of Die Casting

There are many advantages for die casting, especially when your products are similar and many. With simple parts, you can make one die to cast nearly perfect copies of your part over and over again. Die casting also helps you create a large amount of parts at a faster speed from 30 to 45 seconds when necessary, which is much faster than the same part printed by an additive manufacturing machine.

There is a limit for materials you can use for 3D printers. For example, some plastics absorb moisture from the air might impact printing resistance and performance. Die casting allows you to make parts out of various strong metals such as zinc, aluminum and plastic. Components manufactured by die cast are usually strong and can last for a long time, which make them used for all works of life.

Which To Choose For Your Project, 3D Printing Or Die Casting?

3D printing is usually the choice for plastic components, because they might need a detail provided by 3D printers as these are precise parts. Moreover, although high quality injection molded plastic parts can definitely be obtained, plastics are not easy to be accepted as metals in die casting. When small batches of custom components need to be manufactured, 3D printing may be the way to go. When a specific type and size of part with a large quantity and fast production is required, then die casting is undoubtedly the best choice. When it is about design compatibility, both 3D printing as well as die casting is specialized.

Some companies choose to combine 3D printing and die casting for their project. You can adopt die casting for your major operations, mass-producing the strong aluminum or zinc components that are the backbone of your operation. Also, 3D printing service can be used for the projects which require more skills or low-quantity. 

If you are looking for a company to reliably manage your die casting needs, get in touch with Die-casting mould. For over 15 years, we gave been die casting high-quality parts for a range of industries, including the medical industry, automotive industry and more. We have advanced die casting technology equipment and experienced die casting technology team, from product mold design to product delivery one-stop production, in order to better serve each customer of Diecasting-mould and ensure the quality of die casting products, we also have our own factory which can effectively help customers improve production efficiency and save production costs!