[abakker]

They also ignore making the mold, so I guess that evens it out? Mold tools are very expensive and commit you to a lot of design constraints as well as lock you in to minimum production cycles that make sense. I agree its not fair, thought.

Given the costs, I'm surprised they didn't do more printers, too.

[cfraenkel]

Design constraints aren't an issue for prototype runs, since you'll have the same constraints for the production mold. Actually, now that I'm writing this out.... the constraints issue is a plus, since it's a dry run of how the actual production parts will be produced. Doing the 1000pc run on a 3d printer won't expose an 'oops' that can't actually be made in a molded part.

[abakker]

I agree with you, but what I was getting at was that if you're just going to print the parts for the entire run, you aren't constrained by the issues like draft, etc. Obviously, if your run is 10,000,000 pieces, then you have no choice, but if your run is <100,000, you might be better off making different design decisions and just getting more printers.