Benchmarking is a crucial step in purchasing a 3D printer for some.  Prototyping Solutions provides experience and resources to make this process easier for you and your colleagues.

As a decision maker or a decision influencer, you will need to gather info about what 3D printers can do and compare capabilities to your needs.  Prototyping Solutions is the resource for this information.  We can help you identify criteria that is most important to you, help you discover factors yet to be considered, and make your design come to life.   You will answer the final question and most important question; “Will the design work?”  Our benchmarking process can put the answer to that question in your hands.

The benchmarking process will help us to get to know you (and your company) and for you to get to know us.  The process starts with us listening to your requirements for the material specifications including pressure, temperature, and chemical resistance.  We will also work with you to determine the proper size, hardness, softness, surface finish, color, and transparency requirements.  Once we agree on a material that meets your design needs, we will identify the best machine for the job.  We can print your part on that machine using Prototyping Solutions print services.  We only require an .stl file of the part you want us to 3D print for you.  With the test part defined, we can move on to answer several more questions.

With a “hold in your hand” 3D printed part, you and your team can confidently answer the question:  “Will the design work?”  The 3D printed benchmark helps you answer several other crucial questions that will be helpful like: “How long will it take to print my design?”; “How much materials will this design use?”; and “How much will this design cost to print.”  All of those questions will be answered by the build sheet we generate and deliver with your part.

With your 3D Printed Part and the build sheet, you will be able to compare additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, to your current prototyping methods.  It’s generally accepted that using additive manufacturing (3D Printing) takes about half the time and half the cost of traditional methods.  We hope you will have enough designs to justify your own 3D printer with this information alone but, if you find that you do not create enough work to justify your own 3d printer then, let us and/or one of our many partners to create them for you.

When making the decision to purchase a printer requires approval within a group, you may find you need additional information to communicate a successful benchmark of a 3D Printer.  We can help here too!  The challenge becomes, how to present the information to management and other decision makers with in your organization.    We can do several supportive activities to help you prove your case.

• If you need to run successive benchmark tests on additional parts, we can run time and cost estimates and deliver build sheets with the details based on other provided .stl files.
• We can deliver case studies of parts of companies in your industry to use as external examples.
• We can give you detailed budget figures that include everything you will need including, the machine, cleaning apparatus, consumable estimates, and shipping, training and long term support contracts.
• We can give you detailed setup instructions to help you prepare for the install.  We have the information to make your safety and compliance office happy including MSDS sheets on all the materials, support and the cleaning solutions.
• Of course, all the support you can ask for is available at our toll free number!

We feel confident that the results of a benchmarking process will support the use of 3D printing in your organization, but we also know that you may have questions in setting up an effective benchmark test.  Let us help you by providing our experience from benchmarking with hundreds of our customers to establish an easy and definitive answer to your questions.

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