Customized mannequins with 3D printing
The mannequin industry is booming, but producing unique mannequins can be very expensive. The traditional way to produce a prototype of a mannequin is making it by hand from clay or wood. Now with 3D printing, the prototyping can be done a lot faster and with significantly reduced costs – from 8 weeks of prototyping to several days of 3D printing.
One of our Builder Extreme customers is a well-known manufacturer of mannequins who produces mannequins for luxury boutiques in Amsterdam, London, Paris and New York. With the help of their Builder Extreme 2000 and 1500 they are able to print high quality prototypes within several days. This prototype will be showed to the customer and after the customers approval, the production for this unique mannequin will start.
3D printing is mostly used for prototyping but for some smaller boutiques, the company is using the Builder Extreme 2000 and 1500 for the production of the mannequins.
This specific torso was printed with a 0.4 mm nozzle with a layer height of 0.2 mm. The mannequin can be printed in one piece, but mostly the arms and legs are printed separately in order to be able to print the mannequin without support material and to save on print time. After gluing the parts together, the mannequin can be further sanded and painted.