Techno Accelerates Innovation with 3D Printing in Product Development

Italian-based Techno develops tailor-made connection solutions for companies across many industries. They pride themselves in designing custom solutions that meet their customers’ highly technical and specific needs, without compromising on their expectations of quality, reliability, cost-effectiveness and speed to market.

To keep pace with faster development cycles and rising customer expectations, Techno investigated how they could improve their internal processes for design validation, functional pre-series production parts, and risk reduction ahead of mold release. By embedding 3D printing directly into product development, they can offer their clients shorter time to market, lower risk, and greater flexibility, from early concepts to low volume production runs.

The Challenge: Faster Product Development Without Early Tooling Risk

Like other manufacturers, Techno struggled with the drawbacks of traditional development cycles. Mold changes were costly, validation took time, and early design decisions carried high risk—especially when redesigning established products. To accelerate their innovation process, the Techno team investigated how to:

• Validate designs faster and more realistically
• Reduce dependency on early mold investment
• Go beyond prototyping to fully functional pre series production before switching to injection molding for production.

The Impact: Silicone as Finishing Piece for 3D Printing as Tool for Pre-Series

Silicone became the icing on the cake. After testing the 3D printable silicone for performance, the Techno team applied it in a product that previously used liquid silicone molding or injection molding TPE and simulated the product approval cycle against final product requirements:

• Sealing against water and dust (IP6)
• Reliability over time
• Mechanical coupling and cable management
• Resistance to thermal and mechanical stress
• Performance comparable to traditional silicone 

With this experiment, Techno validated the 3D printed silicone as a product usable in real applications, but also validated it as a possible alternative, almost pin-to-pin compared to the liquid silicone molding they already have in place at the company.