I agree that you're completely right for the kind of "consumer" scale injection molding. But they're talking about making perhaps only a few thousand parts. T

I agree that you're completely right for the kind of "consumer" scale injection molding. But they're talking about making perhaps only a few thousand parts. The number I saw was 2400 or so. For only 2400 parts (per YEAR!) you could make aluminum molds which are much, much cheaper. 2400 parts a year is 50 per week or one every three hours. Even if your cycle time was 10 minutes (which is an eternity even for old shoddy equipment) you can still make all the parts in 400 hours which is 2.5 weeks straight or 10 weeks of 9-5 production. There is a company in the US which will make simple molds for much less than $50k. For that you could get 5-10 molds and all the parts and possibly have money to spare. http://www.protolabs.com/protomold http://www.protolabs.com/protomold If you're talking about the kinds of molds necessary to do something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHwTHarf8Ck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHwTHarf8Ck then yes I agree $50k is a total joke. But for the batch of parts necessary to build a semi-successful production run for a 3d printer, $50k might be overkill.