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Sadly, 3D printers are still cheaper. I once needed to make a few customized gears out of food safe plastic. I asked several online services for quotes and I c

Sadly, 3D printers are still cheaper. I once needed to make a few customized gears out of food safe plastic. I asked several online services for quotes and I called several on-location shops in northern Germany. The quotes I got were all around $1800 per unique gear shape. Since I needed 4 different shapes (i.e. $7k for outsourcing), it was much cheaper to buy a 3D printer, watch some tutorials and spend two working days just to make them myself. Plus I honestly don't know why Shapeways (for example) will always quote you multiple weeks in lead time. What do they do in those 2 weeks after the print finished but before they send the parcel?

thorncorona 3y ago
you probably get scheduled in the down time between actually important clients.
m_eiman 3y ago
> Plus I honestly don't know why Shapeways (for example) will always quote you multiple weeks in lead time Because they can get you to pay more to skip the wait, probably.
dendrite9 3y ago
Would you consider the parts you made foodsafe? Or would you have to use the parts to make a mold, then produce foodsafe parts? The nooks and crannies in 3d printed plastic, plus the less controlled melting/cooling has concerned me for making something which is food safe. Mostly the concern about places for bacteria to hide on the parts.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  It also depends on what you are doing. If they are single-use, they can be made food-safe pretty easily, even with the nooks and crannies. With 3d printing, it can be pretty cheap to do single-use stuff. You can also electro-plate them with silver and have a pretty sanitary part.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    > You can also electro-plate them You can electro-plate thermoplastic?
    - rcxdude 3y ago
      Yes. It generally involves applying a mildly conductive layer first, for which there are a variety of techniques.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  Probably the only way to make it reliably foodsafe without a lot of postprocessing would be replacing the parts frequently. It's possible to perfectly merge the layers by printing with 100% infill, burying the part in fine grained salt and then remelting it in an oven, but that takes time.
- fxtentacle 3y ago
  No, the stuff that directly comes out of the 3D printer is not foodsafe. Some of it is biocompatible, though, which means you can safely lick it for a while. But you can use 3D printing to create foodsafe molds and then use them to cast foodsafe plastic copies of your 3D-printed master.
werdnapk 3y ago
I have multiple small plastic components that have broken for my appliances and use some quick fixes to get the appliance working again, but they eventually break again. These cheap pieces of plastic can never be purchased alone and require buying a much more expensive part which includes the cheaper plastic piece. Saying that, 3D printing really seems like something I'd like to start doing and build my own parts to fix things myself. Any recommendations on a printer to use?
- fxtentacle 3y ago
  I wouldn't call it a recommendation, but I suffer through using my Formlabs SLA printer because the results are of amazing quality. But their resin is expensive, you need 2 additional machines if you want to do the washing and curing halfway conveniently and since the beginning (and still ongoing) there have been firmware issues which cause the machine to sometimes lock you out of a DRM-ed resin cartridge before it is actually empty ... but in exchange you get a pretty reliable 0.1mm precision on stable waterproof parts that look like they were injection molded. With the right settings, nobody will recognize the parts as 3D printed because there are no visible layer lines at all and after a bit of varnish you can get the clear resin to be see-through like acrylic glass.
  - werdnapk 3y ago
    That's a high end looking printer, with a high end price. How much 3D printing do you do? Which model specifically do you own? Really nice looking stuff.

thorncorona 3y ago

you probably get scheduled in the down time between actually important clients.

m_eiman 3y ago

> Plus I honestly don't know why Shapeways (for example) will always quote you multiple weeks in lead time Because they can get you to pay more to skip the wait, probably.

dendrite9 3y ago

Would you consider the parts you made foodsafe? Or would you have to use the parts to make a mold, then produce foodsafe parts? The nooks and crannies in 3d printed plastic, plus the less controlled melting/cooling has concerned me for making something which is food safe. Mostly the concern about places for bacteria to hide on the parts.

withinboredom 3y ago
It also depends on what you are doing. If they are single-use, they can be made food-safe pretty easily, even with the nooks and crannies. With 3d printing, it can be pretty cheap to do single-use stuff. You can also electro-plate them with silver and have a pretty sanitary part.
- Chris2048 3y ago
  > You can also electro-plate them You can electro-plate thermoplastic?
  - rcxdude 3y ago
    Yes. It generally involves applying a mildly conductive layer first, for which there are a variety of techniques.
alpaca128 3y ago
Probably the only way to make it reliably foodsafe without a lot of postprocessing would be replacing the parts frequently. It's possible to perfectly merge the layers by printing with 100% infill, burying the part in fine grained salt and then remelting it in an oven, but that takes time.
fxtentacle 3y ago
No, the stuff that directly comes out of the 3D printer is not foodsafe. Some of it is biocompatible, though, which means you can safely lick it for a while. But you can use 3D printing to create foodsafe molds and then use them to cast foodsafe plastic copies of your 3D-printed master.

werdnapk 3y ago

I have multiple small plastic components that have broken for my appliances and use some quick fixes to get the appliance working again, but they eventually break again. These cheap pieces of plastic can never be purchased alone and require buying a much more expensive part which includes the cheaper plastic piece. Saying that, 3D printing really seems like something I'd like to start doing and build my own parts to fix things myself. Any recommendations on a printer to use?

fxtentacle 3y ago
I wouldn't call it a recommendation, but I suffer through using my Formlabs SLA printer because the results are of amazing quality. But their resin is expensive, you need 2 additional machines if you want to do the washing and curing halfway conveniently and since the beginning (and still ongoing) there have been firmware issues which cause the machine to sometimes lock you out of a DRM-ed resin cartridge before it is actually empty ... but in exchange you get a pretty reliable 0.1mm precision on stable waterproof parts that look like they were injection molded. With the right settings, nobody will recognize the parts as 3D printed because there are no visible layer lines at all and after a bit of varnish you can get the clear resin to be see-through like acrylic glass.
- werdnapk 3y ago
  That's a high end looking printer, with a high end price. How much 3D printing do you do? Which model specifically do you own? Really nice looking stuff.