Introduction
When searching for a phone case supplier, it is essential to strike a balance between quality, cost, and delivery time for bulk orders. Have you ever wondered which production process – injection molding or 3D printing – best suits your business goals? Or how to weigh 3D printing vs injection molding pros and cons for your specific needs?
As a trusted phone case manufacturer and the best injection molding company, we break down key differences to help you make the wisest decision for your next order. Let’s get started.
How Are Phone Cases Manufactured
Before we compare injection molding vs 3D printing, let’s clarify how each method translates into phone case production – no technical terms, just the facts that buyers need.
Injection molding: Mass production standards
Injection molding is the preferred process for phone case manufacturers to serve bulk orders, especially for those phone case brands seeking high-precision injection molding.
The following is the decomposition process: Molten plastic materials(such as TPU, PC, silicone, or ABS – the preferred choice for all durable, market-oriented phone cases) is injected into a custom mold under high pressure. Once cooled, the mold is opened, and a uniform finished phone case is ready.
For you, this means scalability. Even low-volume injection molding (for smaller batch orders) offers reliability, but the true value lies in large quantities. As a leading injection molding company, we rely on this process to produce thousands of identical, high-quality phone cases, perfectly meeting the demands of mass production.
3D Printing: Customized & Small-Batch Solution
Injection Molding vs 3D Printing: 6 Critical Factors for Bulk Orders
1. Cost Efficiency
- Injection molding: The initial mold cost may be higher, but once production begins, the unit cost will drop significantly. Even compared with 3D printing, this is the case for small-batch injection molding. For orders of over 5,000 units, this is by far the most cost-effective option. As an injection molding manufacturer, we often see that when buyers choose this method for large orders, they can save 30-50% of the unit cost.
- 3D printing: The absence of mold costs means lower initial investment, but the comparison between the costs of 3D printing and injection molding becomes a disadvantage, as the unit cost remains high even in small batches. The speed of printing only one phone case at a time is relatively slow, so expanding the scale to over 1,000 units will become extremely expensive.
