When Hewlett-Packard split in two November 2015, a new corporate entity called HP Inc. took charge of the company’s printing business. One of HP Inc.’s first steps will be to add a new dimension to that business by introducing its own line of 3D printers. The company says its 3D printers will offer part manufacturers faster speeds and good part quality, and at a lower purchase price than competing systems.

HP’s 3D printing process, called Multi Jet Fusion (MJF), is built on the company’s Thermal Inkjet technology for creating color prints, which allows printing of chemical droplets on a surface.

HP says that it created MJF with the commercial design and manufacturing market in mind, as opposed to hobbyists and consumers, says Alex Monino, director of HP’s 3D printing business. Monino says that HP sees 3D printing as a key part of the future of manufacturing—and of its own future. “We believe that we are on the cusp of the next industrial revolution, and that 3D printing will drive a seismic shift in manufacturing workflows and production,” he says. “HP will be a leader in that revolution.”

MJF starts with a layer of powdered material deposited on a print bed. Initially, MJF printers will be limited to production thermoplastic materials, but HP says it aims to develop new 3D print materials, including ceramics and metals.

With the material in place on the print bed, a carriage containing an HP Thermal Inkjet array passes from left to right, printing chemical agents in specific patterns across the powder layer. The Thermal Inkjet array is equipped with some 30,000 nozzles that can print more than 30 million drops per second across the working area. These 20 µm drops can be fusing agents (which are deposited where powder particles are supposed to fuse together) or detailing agents (applied where the fusing action needs to be magnified or reduced).

Next, a second carriage carrying a light source passes across the work area from top to bottom. This exposes the powder and chemicals to light, which provides the energy necessary to fuse the particles. At the same time, the carriage lays down an additional powder layer. The process repeats, creating layer after layer until a complete part is formed.

Speedy Part Printing

Some 3D printing processes fuse materials together at a single point, using a focused laser beam, for example. By contrast, MJF creates an entire surface area in one step, which makes the system faster than technologies that rely on point processing.

This “Klein bottle” shows how MJF can vary color throughout a part. Image source: Krasul.In addition, MJF allows users to stack modular Thermal Inkjet arrays. This provides more nozzles for wider build envelopes (up to 40”) and increased writing speeds. As a result, HP claims that MJF is 10 times faster than existing selective laser sintering (SLS) and fused deposition modeling technologies.

Terry Wohlers, a Colorado-based 3D printing consultant, has watched the MJF process in action and says that “each layer took a few seconds, but with laser sintering it can take a minute.”

Although slower than MJF, SLS can make parts with good mechanical properties. But HP claims that MJF does not sacrifice part quality for the sake of speed. Helpful in this regard, the company says, is the fact that MJF reduces the amount of focused energy needed to attain full material fusing, which results in more consistent material properties.

What’s more, HP says MJF is less expensive than currently available 3D printing technologies. It attributes this in part to reduced fusing energy requirements. In addition, the company says that the lower heating power requirement boosts material reuse rates, minimizing waste.

Voxel-level Properties

Another selling point touted by HP is the possibility of using MJF to control part and material properties at the level of an individual volumetric pixel, or voxel. For example, MJF printers could produce a different color at each voxel by depositing agents containing cyan, magenta, yellow or black colorants across a part layer.

HP also says that MJF may be able to create parts with a variety of controllably variable properties. This would be done by depositing transforming agents, as well as by controlling the interaction of fusing and detailing agents with each other and with the material to be fused. Besides color (HP says it eventually wants to offer the same set of colors as for conventional printing), potentially controllable properties include strength, elasticity, surface roughness and electrical and thermal conductivity.

Monino says that the core MJF technology is currently being tested by customers. HP plans to unveil the first MJF printer later in 2016.