3D printing has moved beyond a novelty and is providing some serious benefits for manufacturers and companies like GHL are tapping into the technology to accelerate production and reduce costs. How? Simple. The 3D printer allows the company to build prototypes in house and get a visual and tactile view of the potential product letting them know whether they have a solid idea or need to go back to the drawing board.
The company recently shared images of its new toy — a MakerBot Replicator 2X — on its Facebook Page with the caption [sic] “Our new 3D-printer has arrived today! So we are able to print prototypes of different cases ourself. This saves us time and we are more independent from other companies.”
Typical prototype production either has to be created in-house by hand, or farmed out to a third-party. You can see it would take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to get the prototype back to see whether or not it was worth pursuing. These added times and costs can be barriers to innovation and while a 3D printer is not an inexpensive investment, they are becoming more approachable as they become more mainstream.
We are interested to see what kinds of products GHL comes up with thanks to its new 3D printer.
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