Are consumer level 3D printers able to print plastic objects of similar quality to ones produced using injection molding? Or is 3D printing useful mostly for the prototyping stage before a design is finalized and a steel mold is produced for injection molding?
I agree with all your points, except the last one. Admittedly, it is still rare, but there are companies out there that, using industrial machines, manage to get close to or (in case of the linked one) exceed injection moulding in tensile strength, and are achieving near isotropy using FDM processes. https://orion-am.com/blog/orion-am-news-1/3d-printing-peek-stronger-than-injection-molding-12
Disclaimer: I work there. However, this article has independent test data that has been verified by 3 different labs by now.
I guess there's always something new to learn. But while it's tested with PEEK (and other high performance thermosplastics) I am curios if it works with more customer-grade materials like PET(G), ASA, PLA or PS, since those have a far lower melting range compared to PEEK. Also most users are probably not willing to pay the price of PEEK or other high performance materials. Nevertheless its a really interesting method i wasn't aware of yet, maybe it will become the new standard for industrial FDM in a few years. Thanks for sharing!
There's no data on those, but we did at some point print air tight (0.8 bar over a week iirc, no vapour smoothing) in abs, so it may be similar. Consumer grade hardware of this sort is probably still pretty far away, but it's not as impossible as many believe :)a