Indeed, I work for a company that manufactures high end technology, and we're in a comfortable position where we don't need the production volume of injection molding, and can use soft-tooling processes. It's a lot less nerve wracking. Also, paint hides a lot of sins. ;-)
The thing to be careful about: Don't assume you know what's cheaper: Injection molding or something else. I've had my own assumptions blown away so many times.
But 3d printing is still kind of at the phase that machine learning went through, where every meeting inspires at least one manager to blurt out: "Have you considered using 3d printing for this design?" with the other managers secretly wishing that they had been so clever.
The thing to be careful about: Don't assume you know what's cheaper: Injection molding or something else. I've had my own assumptions blown away so many times.
But 3d printing is still kind of at the phase that machine learning went through, where every meeting inspires at least one manager to blurt out: "Have you considered using 3d printing for this design?" with the other managers secretly wishing that they had been so clever.