[Jeddostotle7]

Quote:

Originally Posted by warmachine6

i did see somewhere you 3d print with this clay like substance, so you 3d print and okay looking model then sculpt it afterwards rather than sanding it down etc, but yeah one day it might , just got to get the right stuff.

The thing is, that's still a longer and more labor-intensive process than molding. With a mold, they just have a machine to inject the plastic into the mold, quickly cool it, and kick the formed piece out of the mold. They can do a lot of pieces really quickly with that (often ~one a second), then they sonic weld together pieces that take multiple parts (upper torso, lower torso, some larger heads/heads with more hair, etc), paint it, and put it together. 3D printing will need to advance to the point where it can produce a part in about a second with high quality and level of detail before it can replace injection-molding. Hopefully one day, though.