Promotional items are a huge market, the more you buy the cheaper they get of course and so for small businesses often buying promotional items just isn’t practical at the costs they are being quoted. Even with the likes of pens and mugs you really need to order at least a 100 or each with your logo and details on to make the price practical.
A pen gets put in a pot with other promotional pens and a mug isn’t much better; to really work a promotional item needs to have some uniqueness. Often companies will give away more expensive promotional items to only valued customers sometimes for small businesses they want a run of 1 or 2 dozen of an item. So this means finding a company to either do the design or take a design and then setup their manufacturing for this one item: perhaps creating molds and setting up machinery, this took a lot of time and man hours and also often resources. The cost per unit therefore would be incredibly high compared to the perceived value of an item when it was actually given to a client: better to just send them a nice hamper then.
3D printing service has changed this though, the setup stage is very fast and involves one person, the machinery used is simply one 3D printer and a 3D printing service is also very quick in comparison. A design company or even the 3D printing services company can create a digital design quite fast, or faster still where based on existing designs. Someone then just presses print and sets how many copies are to be made: the 3D printer can then perform 3D printing services on its own with no human input until finished. These finished pieces can have moving parts and are made in a light weight but tough resin that means finished products can be usable as well as decorative. With 3D printers by Z Corp used for 3D printing Services the products can even be printed in full multicolor so no further work is needed once a piece is printed: as mentioned a print can include moving parts so their isn’t even a need for assembly.
EMS are a 3D printing services provider who own some of Z Corp’s 3D printers including a Z650 and hey recently turned out a few dozen unique items for a turbocharger manufacturer. From a CAD digital 3D model EMS printed several dozen models of turbochargers in a few days. The finished product was a cut away design showing the workings of a turbocharger with pieces in different bright colors making it an interesting even educational but also attractive piece printed on to a stand so it could be instantly displayed. The great thing is though for the manufacturer that if they want more items printed they can order a few more even one more at virtually the same price per unit that they paid before as it is only a matter of clicking a print button on the files that EMS already have.
It would even be easy through the 3D printing services EMS offer to make slight changes to each unit: for example adding ‘presented to such and such a company’ on the base of each item.