Injection moulding is still the right answer at real volume — nothing beats it on per-part cost once tooling is amortised across tens of thousands of units. The question we get from B2B clients is where the line sits below that, and the answer is: lower than most people expect.
The tooling problem
A steel mould is a fixed cost paid before you make a single good part, and it's paid again — in full — every time the design changes. For a part that's still being validated, or one that will only ever run in the hundreds or low thousands, that fixed cost rarely pays itself back.
SLS nylon printing has no tooling step. Cost scales with volume from part one, which means the "break-even" quantity against moulding is really a break-even against your own volume forecast, not a hard universal number.
The BBS wheel caps shown above ship in sets of four — a small, real-world batch, and exactly the volume range where tooling a mould rarely pays for itself.
Where the line actually sits
It depends heavily on part complexity and material, but as a rough shape: simple parts in the low thousands often still favour printing once you account for tooling amortisation and the cost of getting the tool wrong the first time. Complex geometry — deep ribs, undercuts, thin walls that would need slides or lifters in a mould — pushes that line even further out, because the printed version carries none of that tooling complexity cost.
What you keep that moulding gives up
- Design changes are free-ish. A revised CAD file prints tomorrow. A revised mould is weeks and thousands of euros.
- No minimum order to justify. Ten parts and ten thousand parts both start from the same file.
- Late design freeze. You can validate the part in the field before committing to a shape that then costs money to change.
Where moulding still wins outright
High volume, simple geometry, and a design that's genuinely finished. If all three are true, a mould will beat us on per-part cost and we'll tell you that directly rather than take a job printing doesn't suit.
Have a production-volume question? Talk to us about your part — we'll give you a straight answer on which route actually makes sense, not just the one we sell. See also SLS nylon vs injection molding for the material side of this.
