At last year’s Formnext, I sat down with HP’s Guayente Sanmartin to talk about the HP 3D printing story so far, a story that, at the time, had reached a milestone of 100 million parts printed with its Multi Jet Fusion technology over a five-year span. Fast forward to this year’s event and the company has added another casual 70 million to that total – in just 12 months.
On this particular trip to Frankfurt, I sat down with Francois Minec, HP’s Global Head of 3D Polymers, following a press conference where ‘ecosystem’ was the theme, and a new HP Jet Fusion 5400 Series, was the headline story.
For Minec, who joined the printing giant’s Personalization & 3D Printing business back in May following three years heading up BASF 3D Printing Solutions GmbH, that 170 million parts milestone marks a significant shift in the how and why customers are adopting additive manufacturing (AM) technologies.
“The proliferation is a result of how many printers are in the market but also that adoption is increasing, the usage rate of the printers is [getting] bigger and bigger,” Minec told TCT. “When we started, additive manufacturing was a lot about prototyping and very small series but now we are selling more and more printers purely for production.”
Production has always been the plan. After HP introduced its MJF technology back in 2016 with a “focus on production manufacturing” and an ambition to procure a piece of the 12 trillion USD manufacturing market opportunity, it introduced its Digital Manufacturing Network in 2019 to accelerate the production of high-quality parts at scale. The network includes a dozen global Digital Manufacturing Partners such as GKN Additive (Forecast 3D), Oechsler, Prototal, ZiggZagg and others as well as a broader network of production professionals to help proliferate AM mass production. The company is also working with brands like BMW, L’Oreal, SMITH Goggles, and Toyota who are using its machines for end-use applications from gear shifts to packaging. There’s a particular example from General Motors which Minec is keen to share during our meeting, where GKN Forecast 3D used a fleet of HP Jet Fusion systems to produce 60,000 spoiler closeout seals for the automotive leader using BASF ULTRASINT TPU01 and post-processing from AMT, halving the part’s production time and overcoming supply bottlenecks.
“The mould would take nine weeks to come,” Minec explained. “But then, just because of one mould missing on a whole car, they had to delay the launch. In order to avoid this, they redesigned the part with additive manufacturing. We bridged the production. So, the value is not only in the part, but thanks to additive manufacturing, a nine or 10-week delay in the launch of a car was avoided.”
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With the new HP Jet Fusion 5400 Series, which launched with the HP Jet Fusion 5420W Solution to enable the 3D printing of white parts – a first for HP which has famously printed in grey, and then in colour – the company aims to further tap into applications in automotive, healthcare and consumer products where white parts are high in-demand, and offer an unlimited variety of post-processing options.
Lamp from Ed Lighting manufactured with the HP Jet Fusion 5420W
“There are some applications which required lighter tones, bright colours, this was the demand from the market, especially in healthcare, for example, in surgical guides,” Minec said. “We're going even beyond that because our solution has a much better UV resistance and the white that you can see is a very nice colour, whatever the angle.”
The HP Jet Fusion 5420W Solution represents a blend of hardware and materials innovation, and on the HP booth, visitors could see examples of consumer products such as lamps from ED Lighting and customised arm casts from Castomade. Early users include DI Labs, Weerg, and Prototal Industries, the latter of which has been using HP’s 3D printing technology since the launch of the Jet Fusion 4200 Series and reported its ‘smoothest beta period ever’ with this latest addition to its 90-strong 3D printer capacity. Minec emphasises the importance of putting HP's machines to work with manufacturing partners like this to dismantle what he described during the press conference as a past industry habit of “overpromising and underdelivering”.
“We use beta customers as partners,” Minec said. “We work in very strong relation because they can help us define better where [the technology] needs to go, where we need to tweak, where the issues are. It's very important to work in this ecosystem.”
That last word was repeated several times during the announcement and throughout my conversation with Minec. Wayne Davey, Global Head of Sales and Go-to-Market said he believes the company’s ethos around ecosystem and partnerships to be “somewhat unique in the industry”. Part of that ecosystem includes partnerships with post-processing specialists AMT and DyeMansion to deliver surface finishing and colouring. At Formnext, AMT and HP announced a new strategic partnership focused on an Integrated Post Processing Solution, dubbed the PostPro DMS (Digital Manufacturing System), for the entire 3D printing production workflow. Oechsler, a new Digital Manufacturing Partner in HP’s network, is the first to take advantage of this joint post-processing support.
“The idea is to have a partner who can fully integrate all the post-processing, not only to the whole chain of processing equipment that you will need in a seamless workflow but also the digital aspect,” Minec added.
Minec also shares how HP’s new white 3D printing capabilities were developed together with DyeMansion, which has previously collaborated with HP on a range of vibrant colour options for its grey Polyamide 12 parts. A 3D printed orthotic from Invent Medical produced with HP 3D HR PA 12 W and finished using DyeMansion’s PowerFuse S and DM60 in bright Peony Pink and Eivissa Blue, passed around during the event, shows the kind of colour vibrancy and consistency that’s now achievable.
“We clearly openly say, if you want to have this kind of part, with our printer and DyeMansion, you can get this result,” Minec added.
Invent Medical part 3D printed and finished via HP and DyeMansion workflow
The ecosystem theme also extended beyond post-processing and into materials and sustainability as HP shared details of a Virtucycle recycling and buyback programme with Arkema, which allows customers to sell used PA11 and PA12 powders rather than disposing of them. Minec, has a lot to offer on the topic of sustainability in AM on a personal level, as a company, and as an industry in terms of how we can better use materials, leverage design for AM more effectively, and produce more lifecycle analysis to better assess AM's credentials against traditional methods of manufacture.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people suggest additive manufacturing is better for sustainability," Minec said. "It can be and it can be worse. If it's used the right way it is sustainable. It's always dependent on the application. [...] What's very important is on demand manufacturing. So many consumer goods are over produced, stored, and end up getting burned or disposed. So on demand manufacturing is key advantage of additive manufacturing, and design for lightweight is something very important. And if you do a comparison, what is the total carbon footprint of an injected [moulded] part and additive manufacturing part. If it's a very big series, injection moulding would be better. In a small series, additive manufacturing would be better because the mould impact is very important - huge energy to make a mould. But what's important is then to [consider the life of the part]."
Just as HP's Metal Jet S100 metal binder jet system launched at IMTS back in September with immediate availability, following four years of development and testing within HP’s Digital Manufacturing Network, the HP Jet Fusion 5420W Solution is ready to order now, and installations will start as soon as February 2023, well ahead of RAPID + TCT. This launch window, from debuting at a trade show to shipping to customers, is very intentional, according to Minec. It’s about building confidence in AM’s capabilities and ensuring that machines are able to do what they are designed to do, and deliver in real production environment.
“Credibility is very important," Minec concludes. "When you're an engineer in a company and are not already in additive manufacturing, you need to make a decision on where to go. If companies in the market are over promising, then somebody could then buy a machine, it doesn't work, or it doesn't deliver, and then that's it. The whole organisation or this company says, ‘additive manufacturing doesn't work. Let's move on.’ And this is not helping.
“Of course, at the beginning everybody was [a bit] overpromising because you needed to push to get the excitement. But now I think, on the contrary, we need to be very humble and say, this is the spec you can achieve and then deliver on it.”
