Consumer Goods

Additive manufacturing for consumer goods

Accelerate product development with 3D printing by producing precise, on-demand parts that optimize manufacturing and reduce time to market in the consumer goods sector.

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Additive manufacturing for consumer goods

Challenges

What do consumer goods demand – and what is our solution

Durability

3D printing enhances the durability of consumer goods by combining advanced materials, optimized designs, and precise manufacturing. High-performance polymers such as nylon, TPU, and carbon fiber-reinforced composites offer excellent strength, impact resistance, and fatigue resistance for products such as eyewear or bicycle saddles, while metals like titanium ensure long-lasting medical implants and tools. Design innovations including lattice structures and complex geometries distribute loads evenly, reduce weight, and enable individual customizations that minimize wear in items such as protective gear or personalized footwear. On-demand production and scalable processes ensure consistent quality, reduce waste, and enable local manufacturing of spare parts, thereby extending product lifespans without compromising material integrity.

Functionality / Performance:

Additive manufacturing improves the functionality and performance of consumer goods by enabling precise customization, intricate geometries, and versatile materials that are often not achievable through conventional manufacturing. High-quality materials provide strength, flexibility, and resistance to heat and chemicals, ensuring reliable performance in components such as gears, handles, and tools. Innovative design features such as internal lattice structures, topology optimization, and ergonomic customization reduce weight, increase stiffness, dampen vibrations, and enhance user comfort, while integrated channels or housings enable smart functions without additional assembly. Rapid prototyping and on-demand production ensure consistent quality, minimize defects, and enable scalable manufacturing, allowing functional prototypes to seamlessly transition into durable, market-ready products.

Aesthetic Quality

3D printing enhances the visual appeal of consumer goods by enabling intricate designs, smooth surfaces, and personalized accents that attract consumers seeking unique, high-quality products. Techniques such as chemical smoothing, abrasive blasting, and varying layer heights produce polished or textured surfaces that increase perceived quality. Multi-material and multi-color printing allow vibrant patterns, color gradients, and metallic or translucent effects, adding sophistication without additional assembly effort. Furthermore, complex geometries – such as organic shapes, lattices, and delicate structures – create striking, sculptural designs that combine aesthetics and functionality in items such as decorative objects, fashion accessories, and furniture.

End-Use Parts

The Stratasys® H350™ with SAF™ technology produces robust end-use parts from PA12 with consistent strength, precision, and excellent dimensional stability – ideal for consumer goods such as handles, housings, or accessories. PA12 offers a tensile strength of around 47 MPa and high elongation at break (orientation-dependent), combined with low water absorption and good resistance to oils, chemicals, and abrasion – well suited for functional parts in humid or demanding environments.

Through chemical smoothing, surfaces are significantly smoothed, porous areas are largely sealed, thereby improving appearance, cleanability, and haptics – which is particularly advantageous for consumer-oriented and hygiene-sensitive applications.

Properties

Tensile Strength (XZ/YX): approx. 47 MPa
Elongation at Break (XZ/YX): approx. 11%
Heat Deflection Temperature (HDT @ 0.45 MPa): approx. 173°C

Use cases

Custom electronics housings and wearable housings
Ergonomic handles and holding fixtures
Sports and leisure equipment

Realistic Multi-Color / Multi-Material Prototypes

PolyJet materials enable the creation of highly realistic, multi-color, and multi-material prototypes for consumer goods production by depositing photopolymer droplets and curing them instantly with UV light. With layer resolutions of up to 16 µm, PolyJet delivers exceptional detail accuracy, smooth surfaces, and precise visual reproduction. Using inkjet-like print heads, PolyJet can simultaneously combine multiple photopolymers within a single component, enabling full CMYK color mixing and the combination of different material properties – such as rigid plastics, rubber-like elastomers, and transparent materials. Complex geometries are supported by a removable gel-like support material that washes off cleanly, reducing post-processing time and enabling rapid design iteration cycles. In the consumer goods sector, PolyJet is particularly well-suited for packaging prototypes in industries such as cosmetics and beverages, where printed labels, graphics, textures, and transparency are critical for early design validation. The technology also produces highly precise form, fit, and function prototypes, including hand tools with soft-touch grips and exact color reproduction, supporting pre-production photography, assembly checks, and stakeholder reviews.

Properties

Standard Accuracy: 0.1–0.3 mm
Layer Thickness: 0.032 mm
Minimum Wall Thickness: 1 mm

Use cases

Packaging & branding
Handhelds & wearables
UI & CMF prototypes

End-Use Parts

3D printing with Stratasys® ABS, combined with chemical smoothing, is suitable for end-use consumer parts in low to medium volumes, particularly when customization and short lead times are important. Although it does not fully replace injection molding, it can meet many functional and aesthetic requirements. Stratasys® ABS (e.g. ABS-M30) offers good strength, impact resistance, and heat resistance, making it suitable for housings, brackets, handles, and covers. Industrial FDM systems ensure repeatability and material traceability, delivering parts that are suitable for real products — not just prototypes. ABS-M30 achieves a tensile strength of approximately 30 MPa in XY orientation, an elongation at break of around 8%, and a flexural strength of approximately 60 MPa, with typical notched Izod values in the range of approximately 100–140 J/m, depending on orientation. The heat deflection temperature ranges from approximately 80–100 °C depending on the test condition, enabling use under moderate thermal loads.

Properties

Tensile Strength (Yield Strength): approx. 31 MPa (XZ axis), approx. 26 MPa (ZX axis)
Tensile Modulus: approx. 2.23 GPa (XZ axis), approx. 2.18 GPa (ZX axis)
Flexural Modulus: approx. 2.06 GPa (XZ axis), approx. 1.76 GPa (ZX axis)
Heat Deflection Temperature (HDT): at 1.82 MPa (264 psi), unannealed, approx. 82–96°C

Use cases

Decorative and functional household items
Protective cases and housings
Fixtures / knobs: drawer handles, remote control housings, etc.

Fixtures and Brackets

PA12 GF is a Nylon 12 compound with 40% glass bead fill, processed via the SAF™ method on the Stratasys H350™. The glass beads increase stiffness and heat deflection temperature compared to unfilled PA12 without significantly compromising processability. Tensile and flexural modulus are considerably higher than pure PA12 due to the glass reinforcement, and the heat deflection temperature (HDT at 1.82 MPa) exceeds 100 °C, qualifying the material for thermally stressed components. Low moisture absorption stabilises dimensional accuracy under varying ambient conditions – a relevant factor for outdoor or humid environment applications.

The H350™ enables high nesting density with uniform thermal distribution across the build volume, reducing property variations between parts at different positions within the print job. Defined powder refresh ratios and standard process parameters ensure reproducible mechanical values across batches. Validated chemical smoothing recipes further improve surface roughness and sealing performance – relevant for functional parts with sealing faces, sliding contacts, or elevated surface quality requirements. Typical consumer goods applications include structural housings, load-bearing clips and brackets, heat-exposed components, and parts where dimensional stability over the product lifecycle is critical.