Most of the case studies we could write are automotive — and we've written a few of those. But half the work that comes through the door is the other kind: brands making a physical product, who need a real production run and can't yet justify a mould. Here's one of those, with the client kept anonymous and the numbers rounded.
The brief
A small consumer-goods brand had a finished product design, a rendered launch campaign and a retail deadline. What they didn't have was €40,000 for injection-mould tooling, or the twelve-week lead time to go with it. They needed a few hundred units, to spec, in six weeks.
That's a situation where printing stops being a prototyping convenience and becomes the production method.
Prototype first, always
We started the same way we start every job: a small prototype run to validate the design against reality, not the render. Two things surfaced immediately — a wall that was too thin to survive drop testing, and a fit that needed a 0.2 mm clearance adjustment. Both were fixed in the file in a day, for nothing. Finding them after a mould was cut would have cost the entire project.
SHIPS 3–5 DAYS
Material and process
The part was a desktop accessory — handled daily, seen close-up, no load. We printed it in SLS nylon for its surface finish and consistency, which meant no visible layer lines and no per-unit sanding. For a product that has to look retail-finished straight off the machine, SLS is usually the right answer — the trade-offs are in our process breakdown.
The production run
Four hundred units, printed in batches of roughly fifty, with a QC sample pulled from every batch. The part-to-part consistency of SLS meant the quality control step was fast — dimensions held across the run, and finish was uniform without individual rework. That's the part of small-batch production that surprises people: at 400 units, per-unit labour is what kills a print run, so you design the labour out.
What the client learned
They launched on time, sold through the first run, and used the revenue to pay for the injection-mould tooling for the second. That's the pattern we see constantly: print now to reach the market and prove demand, tool later once demand is proven. The print run wasn't a compromise — it was the bridge.
Making a physical product and stuck at the tooling question? Tell us what you're building and we'll tell you the cheapest honest way to get your first few hundred units in hand.
