Waipak, a plastics manufacturing company in the Hawkes Bay has received a significant boost to efficiency and performance by introducing low cost 3D printing into its production environment. With the investment in two XYZ Da Vinci printers, Waipak is able to prototype faster and at a fraction of the cost of the previous solution, accelerating the design and production of finished goods.
Established in 2009 and located in Hastings, Waipak is a rigid plastics packaging supplier, with a focus on bottles and other closures. It designs containers to meet the exacting standards of a range of customers in the food and beverage and other consumer goods markets.
Situation
Mathew Mannington, Waipak director and technical manager, explains the process of creating the bottles and containers in which a vast range of consumer goods are supplied: “Packaging is a key part of how goods are presented to customers, so our clients obviously want to see mock-ups before containers are put into production.”
In the past, he explains, this was done by making models out of wood or plastic, requiring the input of a skilled artisan. “That takes a lot of time and it costs a lot of money,” Mannington points out.
When it came to prototyping, after the initial models, single cavity moulds would be created so that a number of examples could made. “This, too, was unwieldy, hard work and expensive – and in making the cavity mould, you only had one shot.”
Then, he says, 3D printing arrived in the market – but in the early days, the devices were very expensive and the preserve of specialists. “We’d outsource printing of mock ups and models to specialist third parties. That still cost thousands of dollars; we progressed to having moulds printed, from which we could make maybe a hundred bottles before the mould was worn out. The cost was still not much less than creating a steel mould – in the thousands of dollars – and you’d need three or four before you’d get towards a production mould.”
Solution
As the price of 3D printers came down, they started to become accessible to organisations like Waipak. The company’s first effort was with another recognised brand of 3D printer. “However, we could not get this machine to work consistently. It just wasn’t reliable – but it did open our minds to the possibilities of doing prototyping on site,” says Mannington.
That’s when the company discovered the XYZ Da Vinci 1.0. “At under a thousand bucks, we did first think it must be something that belongs in a kid’s bedroom, but decided to give it a try.” Mannington quips.
Putting them to work, however, was something of a revelation. “The XYZ machines are easy to set up and use and it is quite amazing how much better the models they produce are than those from our previous printer. The price of the finished models is also so low that we could be working with the designer and go ‘hey, that looks pretty cool’ and just print it, no problem. We even print stuff off now just for fun.”
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Results
Mannington says the XYZ Da Vinci’s are worked ‘pretty hard’ in the Waipak facility. “These things are pumping out valuable product for us at a ridiculosly low cost per item. What was once thousands of dollars now costs under $40 and that’s including the capital cost of the machine being factored in.”
Just how significant a boost to productivity the XYZ’s deliver is made clear in an example: “We were working on a design for a bottle that has to fit into an airline tray table. We thought we had the design right and printed a sample – and quickly discovered it would fall over. So we were immediately able to tweak the design and reproduce a more stable bottle.There’s nothing like having a model in your hands to quickly see what works and what doesn’t. You cannot get that from a drawing or even a 3D rendering on-screen,” he relates.
Waipak’s 3D prints are somewhat more complex than designs which can be downloaded off the internet; Mannington says it is a bit like printing eggshells. “Our models are 2mm thick and hollow. That does mean they are more complex than standard models and require careful setup of the XYZ printer. If we get it wrong, the model collapses and we get a mess of melted plastic – but that’s a simple matter of cleaning and recalibrating the print head, and back to work.”
Having two 3D printers on site means Waipak can rapidly prototype while saving thousands of dollars. “We can also throw more options at our clients and every printed model is like an advert for our business. It helps accelerate the development process and we see it as a massive advantage – so much so that we’re going to add another two machines in the near future so we can 3D print even more,” he concludes.
