Design Tips

Get quick advice on creating plastic and metal parts for 3D printing, CNC machining, and injection moulding processes. Designing with manufacturability in mind can accelerate production time and reduce production costs.

Popular Topics

Cost Reduction
Making small design changes can often save you time and money.
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Defects
Design defects happen sometimes. It’s important to know in advance how to avoid the most difficult ones.
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Basic Design
Sometimes you need quick confirmation about elements of your designs and the best advice is to go back to basics.
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Complex Design
Get past the basics and delve into the deeper questions of how to model parts with complicated geometries and features.
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Plastic
We stock more than 130 plastics across our moulding, machining, and 3D printing services. Each has its own benefits and quirks. These design tips will get you ahead of any issues.
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Metal
From dangerously sharp edges to corrosion, there’s a lot to think about when designing metal parts. Learn how to avoid the big problems with these design tips.
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torus protolabs design aid

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Protolabs has a library of helpful tips on injection moulding, CNC machining and additive manufacturing that address design considerations for each service. The tips cover areas like draft and sink; threaded holes and turned parts; and different 3D printing processes. Each month, we publish a new Design Tip to help you create the best possible prototypes and production parts.

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Featured Design Tips

Plastic injection moulded part design - how to solve issues with wall thickness

Solving Wall Thickness Issues in Moulded Parts

Address design change requests related to slot widths and wall thicknesses for injection molded parts
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Brass part

Finding the Right Corrosion-resistant Metals

Parts turning to piles of rust? These materials can help you avoid the scourge of corrosion.
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A quality technician examines a plastic part

Plastics that Meet Medical Needs

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to plastics for medical parts. At the top of the list is safety, parts going inside the body and longevity. So, which is the best to choose for your application?
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Glass Transition Temperature of Polymers

Glass Transition Temperature of Polymers

There’s an important but often overlooked material consideration when designing parts for plastic injection moulding. It’s called Tg, short for glass transition temperature or Tg.
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UV Resistant Plastics

UV Resistant Plastics

This design tip evaluates UV-resistant plastic options available for injection moulding, 3D printing, and CNC machining.
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plastic comparison chart

Selecting a Material for Stereolithography (SLA) 3D Printing

Compare materials for stereolithography with one another and with injection-moulded plastics.
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 Insight Videos

Insight

Our Insight Video Series covers a range of design tip topics in video format. Each video giving you a deeper Insight into how to design better parts.

Covering specific topics such as; supply chain, threading for milled and turned parts and tips for multipart assemblies.

Insight

Design Essentials

We've compiled our most essential manufacturing tips into three downloadable design guides on 3D printing, machining, and moulding. Each looks at improving manufacturability, reducing production costs through design, material selection, and more.