You may have the same question when you need to have some prototypes made. "3D printing or CNC prototyping"? If you want to know more about these two different rapid prototyping techniques, read on.

First of all, to choose the right method to manufacture your parts you need to choose the right model maker. You need to find the best place to make it happen. If you are reading this pape, then you have come to the right place! NextProto can help you with your rapid manufacturing needs. As a professional manufacturer of rapid prototypes, we can do 3d printing, cnc prototyping, injection molding and investment casting. CNC prototyping and 3d printing are the two ways for rapid prototyping.

Now, let us choose one of these to produce the parts rapidly. We need to know some project informations, i.e. material, surface finish and quantity. When your parts are plastics, we can make it by 3d printing in SL or SLS. The material is ABS or Nylon simulant. They are not real ABS or Nylon but they are similar. What kind of surface finishing you need? This is also a frequently asked question by our project managers when we quote the job. If you need very smooth finish, we can do SLA or CNC machining in ABS material. SLS parts are very rough and to be honest, our price of SLS is not so competitive compared to the west.             
If you request real engineering grade plastics, then cnc machining is the only way for rapid prototyping. The bar and block materials for CNC is all real ABS, Nylon or Delrin. Other plastics such as PMMA, Acrylic, PC, PP, PA, PE, PEEK, PEI are also available at NextProto. There will be visible tool marks on the surface for cnc machined parts, which means you will see the machining paths on the raw finish part. So when you need smooth finish from machined parts, we can use sand papers and polishing acids to remove the tool marks and get the surface smooth.

If you request real engineering grade plastics, then cnc machining is the only way for rapid prototyping. The bar and block materials for CNC is all real ABS, Nylon or Delrin. Other plastics such as PMMA, Acrylic, PC, PP, PA, PE, PEEK, PEI are also available at NextProto. There will be visible tool marks on the surface for cnc machined parts, which means you will see the machining paths on the raw finish part. So when you need smooth finish from machined parts, we can use sand papers and polishing acids to remove the tool marks and get the surface smooth.

For precision parts in small batches, we advise to use cnc machining. This is the best technology to keep all the features accurately. We use the latest CAD/CAM system and produce the parts directly from your 3D CAD data. Once the set up and programme is done, the cnc machine can be very stable and will duplicate the parts in the same way. We inspect strictly the first article to make sure the parts are right from the first time.

If you need to know more about cnc prototyping and 3d printing technologies, please feel free to drop us an email at sales@nextproto.com. Our engineering team will be in touch with an answer right away.