I suppose there is no short answer to that since it will always depend on the context. However, if I were to venture a short answer anyways, it would most definitely be yes!
I have recently had the opportunity to experience this first hand in regards to a project we do at my work. I work at a private, nonprofit research company and our main focus is on software development.
We do however also have projects related to robotics, and IoT (Internet of Things) and similar areas.
Quite a few of our projects employ some sort of sensor based data aquisition, and that entails deploying large amounts of sensors in various situations. Usually it is something like setting up (non-intrusive and anonymisized) wifi sniffers at festivals to try and map the traffic.
We also use rfid chips and similar.
recently we got the assignment to deploy a number of small sensors to shopping carts. The sensor itself is the size of a coin but it had to be protected from prying fingers and water so we asked different companies how much that would cost. and ended at 200,- danish kroner a piece (we needed app 250 pieces)
it turned out that if I designed a small box which can be screwed together and fixed to the cart with strips, large enough to hold the sensor as well as a small(5 dkk) watertight capsule, we could get them printed at app 60 dkk a piece at a local print service.
So thats what we did. I measured the sensor, made a preliminary design and did a test print, this took about 3 hours of my time (not counting the actual time the printer ran, only my time)
We got a usable box which can be easily modified to fit our needs and lives up to our requirements much more than a bought version, and at a better price, so yes it is viable for runs up to around 200-500 pieces. more than that and I would think injection molding would probably be the cheapest.
This is the reason why I am currently working on setting up injection molding at home, but more on that in a later post.
Thanks for reading this. Im EvilHippie, a compulsive creative and jack o' trades. If you want to know more about me, check out my introduction post here
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