Injection moulding is genuinely unbeatable for very high volumes, but the cost of cutting a mould only makes financial sense once you are making many thousands of identical parts. For runs of tens to a few hundred, that upfront tooling cost is a heavy burden, and this is exactly the gap where SLS comes into its own because there is no mould to pay for and no minimum order quantity to meet before you can start.
That makes SLS a genuinely practical route for low volume production, niche products, and bridging supply while injection tooling is being built. We run production batches through our Perth MJF & SLS printing service for businesses that need real parts in real quantities, without the capital outlay that moulding demands or the long wait while a tool is cut.
No tooling, no minimums
Without a mould to amortise across a run, the cost per part stays essentially flat whether you order ten parts or a hundred. That economics lets you launch a product, gauge real demand from your customers, and then reorder as needed rather than committing a large sum of capital to inventory that might sit on a shelf if the product does not take off the way you hoped.
It also means design changes between batches are effectively free, because there is no expensive tool to recut. If you spot an improvement after the first production run, you simply update the file and print the next batch with the change already in place, which keeps your product improving rather than frozen by the cost of tooling.
Consistency across a batch
SLS nests many parts in a single build and produces consistent mechanical properties throughout the chamber, so a production run comes out uniform from part to part. We can repeat the same nest build after build to keep parts matching over time, which matters when customers expect every unit to look and perform the same as the one before it.
For parts that need serial numbers, date codes or small variations between units, the fully digital workflow makes those changes straightforward, since each part is just a file that can be tweaked before it prints. That flexibility is hard to match with a fixed mould that produces only one shape.
Planning stock and reorders
Low volume printing also changes how you hold stock. Instead of ordering a huge batch to justify a tool and then warehousing it, you can keep a modest buffer and reorder in small lots as sales come in, which frees up cash and reduces the risk of being left with obsolete inventory after a revision.
Because the lead time on a repeat run is predictable, many customers treat us as an on demand supplier and simply reorder when stock runs low. Talk to us at contact us about a standing arrangement and we can help you plan batch sizes that balance cost per part against how much stock you want to hold. We can also keep your validated files on record so a repeat order goes straight to the machine without any setup delay or re quoting each time.
Knowing when to switch
There is always a crossover point where the per part savings of injection moulding finally outweigh its tooling cost, and we are very happy to advise where that point lands for your specific product so you invest in tooling at exactly the right moment, not too early and not too late.
- No upfront tooling, so low volumes stay genuinely affordable.
- Easy and free to revise the design between production batches.
- Reorder on demand instead of holding large, costly stock.
- A natural bridge while injection tooling is being produced.
- Consistent results across the build and from batch to batch.