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HP Unveils Industrial 3D Printer 10X Faster, 50% Cheaper Than Current Systems
Lucas123 writes HP today announced an 3D industrial printer that it said will be half the cost of current additive manufacturing systems while also 10 times faster, enabling production parts to be built. The company also announced Sprout, a new immersive computing platform that combines a 23-in touch screen monitor and horizontal capacitive touch mat with a scanner, depth sensor, hi-res camera, and projector in a single desktop device. HP's Multi Jet Fusion printer will be offered to beta customers early next year and is expected to be generally available in 2016. The machine uses a print bar with 30,000 nozzles spraying 350 million drops a second of thermoplastic or other materials onto a print platform. The Multi Jet Fusion printer uses fused deposition modeling, an additive manufacturing technology first invented in 1990. the printer works by first laying down a layer of powder material across a build area. Then a fusing agent is selectively applied with the page-wide print bar. Then the same print bar applies a detailing agent at the parts edge to give high definition. The material is then exposed to an energy source that fuses it.
the thermoplastic "ink" will be the most expensive substance on Earth, by weight or volume. And protected by a DRM'd cartridge system. And declare itself "empty" at about 25% remaining, in order to "protect the printer from running dry".
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Eh, I think the weakspot in any 3d printing will be the software. As a hobby engineer, I use Solidworks which is several thousand dollars (luckily already on some of my employer's computers so they foot the bill).
But at home, I tried FreeCad, Cubify Invent, and several other free or cheap options and I find them invariably terrible, at least as far my limited experience can discern. FreeCad in particular, asides from UI nonintuitive issues and heaps of bugs (various cuts and operations simply disappearing for no reason), is only up to v0.14 since launching in 2002. It's like the Gnu Hurd of that genre.
I don't see how the 3D printing revolution will remotely come to town without something decent on the software front that's $200 or less.
*Posted this yesterday in a thread, but was too late for anyone to see it.
Anyone smart enough, should work and WORK on this.
The future of 3D printing is so big I can't even begin to mention it so most would understand it, but I'll give it a go:
1) Instant repair parts anywhere in the world on demand.
2) This is the beginning of teleportation!
3) Instant surgical body parts to anywhere in the world on demand.
4) Toys can be bought online, printed almost the same day, you'll pay for the consumables + design.
5) Businesses will be able to personalize your phones/ipads almost instantly.
6) We will build entire houses with this stuff.
7) We will even be able to bring parts to the moon/mars/outer-space without bringing them physically by spaceship.
8) We will even be able to print food, make the textures very similar by scanning eg. meat etc.
9) People! This is the beginning stages of the real replicator you all know from fictional stories as star-trek etc.
10) Insert your own idea / wish here, I can't be the only one.
I will encourage ANY company to do this, small or big. This can only go too slow, if you ever wanted to get in on a revolution in the making, THIS IS IT!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
My favorite part of the article is the fact that it appears to be written by HP given the file:// link in the article.
The printer does not spray "drops of thermoplastic," it sprays magic chemicals that either inhibit or promote sintering onto a bed of thermoplastic powder and then uses a big o' incandescent bulb to fuse the powder. This is pretty much the selective inhibition of sintering process, so the magic chemicals are probably just something like salt water and black ink.
Now what does this mean? Well because you have to spray a sintering inhibitor on, you can't recycle as much powder, unless they give you a special powder recycler for removing the inhibitor. Because you're printing out lots of black ink, can't really recycle powder, and HP will lock you into using their cartridges you will be paying out the a$$ for ink and 'toner.'
This is a HUGE development though. If the parts really have the same strength and detailing as those produced with laser sintering, as in even if this machine did not come equipped with color capability, then this has just made a lot of big industrial 3d printers obsolete. Getting rid of the need for laser and nitrogen gas purge system for sintering type machines is HUGE! Even with huge expensive print cartridges it's going to be cost competitive with everything out there.
Heck, it probably makes the whole 3d printing service bureau business model obsolete, because this puts high quality 3d printers in the cost range for small businesses.
This is probably the "attack of the killer micros" moment for the additive manufacturing industry.
Would you prefer that they completely shut down their conventional printer business to focus on...
Hell yeah!
Sorry, did you say anything after that?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm also a Solidworks user. I think you overlooked a few.
GeoMagic Design Elements US$1300.
McNeel Rhino US$ 995
Cubify Design US$ 199
Cubify Invent US$ 49
I used a trial of GeoMagic Design, and almost purchased it. I think it was Alibre Design, so it somewhat of a Solidworks clone, and is far better than I expected. But my clients use Solidworks, so.....
I also use Rhino, and it does stuff Solidworks can only dream of. It lack full parametrics and a history tree, but has fantastic surface modeling. If you do complex surfaces, this is the one to get.
Cubify Design and Invent - have not tried them, but they likely fit what most people want to do - make simple parts.
Disclosure: I have been a customer for each of these companies, and know people at all three. I used to be a dealer for Solidworks and Rhino 14 years ago, and wish I didn't have to pay full retail today.
Place nail here >+
It's a sign that years and years of mismanagement maybe didn't completely kill the ability for them to come up with interesting stuff This is exactly the kind of thing they need to do. Shore up HP Labs and solve some neat problems and ship cool stuff. Sure, let's be skeptical, but good for them for trying.
The printer does not use fused deposition modeling. It uses powder bed and inkjet head 3D printing. It looks like the fusing agent is a heat or UV cured polymer that can be coloured.
Blender, my friend, now has great sculpting tools akin Zbrush and many less travelled options to export for CAM. It is free and supported by a great community.
I used CAD tools as a pro, 10 years ago. I used NX, solidworks, edge, ProE WF, Autocrap, etc. I coded parametric designs from my own designs, I did non-linear hypersonic CFD with fluent and CFX on those designs, I did reverse-kinematic non-linear space robotics on those designs, I did it all.
When I stopped caring about empirical tons of horseshit produced by those software, and starting creating and designing again in the real world, for myself and others where it mattered, I left all of these software behind and went back to my CG roots. No BS, I have not looked back in 10 years, I have not looked back from Blender in 3 years. I am orders of magnitute more prolific than I was.
Blender has easily replaced 3DS, maya, rhino, lightwave, etc for me also, it is a no-brainer and my go-to now. Except for very specialized things at the end of my production pipeline (games, rendering and to convert back to .IGES for CAD exchange). I use blender for most of my workflow now. Each new version of Blender, I use it for MORE of my workflow. For CAM pipelines, I use something akin to freeCAD when .STL export is not good enough and I need a .IGES file format for exchange.
And don't tell me materials, surface specs, coatings, etc.. yada yada. EVERY shop needs me to explain this to them both in conversation and with production anotations to paper drawings, because NO ONE can read a production drawing anymore anyways. I would rather give my design spec to a machine, everytime, with an IGES or STL.