5 ings to know about our D printers

5 things to know about our 3D printersHP Jet Fusion creates bold new possibilities for manufacturing and innovation.

Today at RAPID, the largest worldwide 3D printing conference, HP unveiled the world's first production-ready 3D printing system for manufacturing: the HP Jet Fusion 3D Printing Solution.

HP has taken a major step toward bringing this disruptive manufacturing solution to market. And in technology, disruptive is good. 3D printing is a fascinating, complex, and highly futuristic topic, and here's what you need to know now.

1. What did we announce?

In October 2014, we announced our HP Multi Jet Fusion technology. Today, we make that real by announcing our first 3D Printing Solutions Jet Fusion 3D 4200 and Jet Fusion 3D 3200 aimed at the prototyping market and short run manufacturing. We did what we said we were going to do: delivered innovation that will help reinvent the current, colossal $12 trillion global manufacturing market.

HP Multi Jet Fusion technology is the breakthrough that helps kick open the door to producing final parts true manufacturing.

We're set to ignite the next industrial revolution by producing superior quality physical parts up to 10 times faster and at half the cost of current 3D print systems.

The HP Jet Fusion 3D 4200 will be available in late 2016 and the HP Jet Fusion 3D 3200 will be available in 2017.

2. What's special about HP's 3D solutions?

We're glad you asked.

Speed. It's worth repeating: this breakthrough technology is up to

10 times faster.

10 times faster.

The business model. We're driving down the cost per part.

Service. HP is trusted, and its reputation for service is excellent.

An open platform. Partners can advance the development of materials

and software.

Resellers. We're building a world-class reseller network of 3D pros.

But ultimately the star of the show is voxel-level control. (Don't worry. We'll explain.)

3. What's a voxel, again?

What a pixel is to 2D printing, a voxel is to 3D printing. So you can think of a pixel in 2D printing and then make it 3 dimensional ... like a tiny square box. In this image, the box is one voxel. A 3D-printed part is made of millions of these voxels.

In the future with Multi Jet Fusion, we can choose the color, density, or material at the voxel level. Yes, the material! We'll be able to print parts that are part rigid and part bendable. In theory, we could make every voxel a different color.

While today's 3D printing technology is limited to a small palette of materials, mainly engineering-grade, multi-purpose thermoplastics, HP is looking at new materials using color, elastomers, ceramics, and more.

4. How will customers use this technology?

Nike, Johnson & Johnson, Jabil, Siemens, Materialise, and Protolabs all have some ideas, and we'll share use cases as we can.

We've already deployed an end-to-end solution to Shapeways, which will use HP technology to print customers' 3D designs.

BMW has plans, too:

BMW is a pioneer and early adopter of innovative technologies in the field of additive manufacturing, especially for prototyping in concept cars and series-like approval buildsJens Ertelhead of BMW Group Additive Manufacturing Center

For our future roadmap toward serial part production and personal customization, we see major potential in our partnership with HP to investigate this new kind of 3D printing technology at an early stage. As one of the first partners, we had the chance to see the constant evolution of the machines over time from the first prototype approximately five years ago to the market ready product that is available now.

Those examples are large manufacturing companies, in-house model shops, or 3D printing companies. Those are the types of customers we'll serve.

5. How can I learn more?

There's lots more information to come, but here's where you can start if you're curious now.

3D printing on HP.com: Watch videos, read product information, and explore our new site.

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LINK:	http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=2266135&pageTit...
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