Additive Manufacturing with Plastics | Plastics Technology

Additive manufacturing or 3D printing in the plastics industry involves the creation of components without dies or tooling—or the fabrication of tooling itself—for use in prototyping, bridge production, or short-run production. Common types include stereolithography (SLA), selective laser sintering (SLS), fused deposition modeling (FDM), and digital light process (DLP). Learn more at What Is Additive Manufacturing?

Formlabs 4L and 4BL offer high sprint speeds and nearly 5 times the volume.

As manufacturing advances with additive, the advance increasingly emphasizes these five themes.

Very small screws have become more common with the growth of additive manufacturing. Designing such screws requires balancing their output requirements with their torque strength.

Technical polymers design firm will supply Purdue University collaboration.

On-demand manufacturer triples its capacity for advanced additive manufacturing and Multi Jet Fusion printing.

Products are aimed at high-performance, chemical-resistant applications.

Formlabs announces SLA printer with much greater speeds than previous generation.

NPE2024: Mantle's additive manufacturing technology is designed for precision tooling.

HP introduces PA 12 S for 3D printing.

The speaker lineup has been announced for this event highlighting the use of 3D printing in the plastics industry.

If a printed tool only has a finite number of shots in it, why waste any of them on process development?

A development and manufacturing service provider is using dissolvable molds to build injection molded silicone prototypes.

3D printing a core and cavity on machine from Gefertec, followed by machining, allowed for a complete mold tool to be produced in three days.

9T Labs continues to enhance the efficiency of its technology, which produces composite parts with intentionally oriented fibers.

As manufacturing advances with additive, the advance increasingly emphasizes these five themes.

Do I Need Additive Manufacturing Skills in My Business?

Essentium announced the third in a series of findings from independent global research on the current and future use of industrial 3D printing. The survey found an increasing need for more education, skills, and training across manufacturers’ organizations. Even as the industry moves towards large-scale AM, 28% of manufacturers reported their personnel lacked AM skills.

How is Additive Manufacturing Applied in Tooling?

In recent years, it has become apparent that additive manufacturing—aka 3D printing—is destined to have a role in plastics mold making, owing to cost and lead-time advantages over conventional subtractive manufacturing—CNC machining—and unique abilities to produce complex internal tooling geometries such as conformal cooling channels.

What is Formnext Chicago?

Formnext Chicago is an industrial additive manufacturing expo taking place April 8-10, 2025 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois.

Formnext Chicago is part of a series of Formnext events in the U.S. being produced by Mesago Messe Frankfurt, AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology, and Gardner Business Media (our publisher).

Here is the full lineup of Formnext events in North America: