Mass Customization of Polylactic Acid (PLA) Parts via a Hybrid Manufacturing Process.

Mass customization is the development of items tailored to specific customers, but produced at low unit cost in high-volume. In this context, hybrid manufacturing (HM) combines fused deposition modeling (FDM) and injection molding (IM) to fabricate a single personalized part with minimum manufacturing cost. In this technique, inserts with different physical features are first FDM-fabricated and then IM-overmolded.

Hybrid Manufacturing of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) via the Combination of Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing and Injection Molding.

Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) is a common thermoplastic polymer that has been widely employed in the manufacturing industry due to its impact resistance, tensile strength, and rigidity. Additive manufacturing (AM) is a promising manufacturing technique being used to manufacture products with complex geometries, but it is a slow process producing mechanically inferior products when compared to traditional production processes like injection molding (IM). Thus, our hybrid manufacturing (HM) process combining materials extrusion AM and IM to create a single article was investigated in this study, in which eleven batches of specimens were made and extensively tested.