HP 3D Printing Announcement

[Feign]

It's not much more expensive to build, but it has been patented to hell and back, so Stratasys has a monopoly on it, therefore, they cost as much as new cars. The build material for it isn't more expensive to produce, but the format lends itself to chipped cartridges, therefore the material costs more than inkjet ink (which is absolutely obscene already).

[curious aardvark]

and you're dealing with both a powder deposition head and an inkjet deposition head. Sla is simpler tech.

So the printer isn't the sprout ?
What's the printer called ?

[Feign]

Well, PolyJet isn't the same as powder and binder, it has a similar mechanic, but doesn't need any powder by curing the resin directly to itself before it can lose its droplet shape.

The printer is called the "HP MultiJet Fusion"... not to be confused with the "HP Fusion IO" flash drive, from a completely different part of the company. Yay originality.

[Feign]

I'm going to go ahead and make the prediction that by the time HP tries to bring their printer price below ten grand, there will only be a very few FFF printers over a thousand dollars.
By the time they try to break into the middle class home market, the majority of people who have any need for it at all will already own a multi-head FFF printer and a home filament extruder.

[brbubba]

I'm going to go ahead and make the prediction that by the time HP tries to bring their printer price below ten grand, there will only be a very few FFF printers over a thousand dollars.
By the time they try to break into the middle class home market, the majority of people who have any need for it at all will already own a multi-head FFF printer and a home filament extruder.

I'll still hold out some hope. Meg Whitman isn't an idiot so I'm going to try and give her a little more credit out of the gate, but clearly all bets are off.

[Brian_Krassenstein]

HP, the largest 2D printing company in the world, made waves six months ago when they announced their impending entry into the 3D printing space. Worldwide Business Director, Hewlett-Packard 3D Printing, J Scott Schiller, was present at this past week's Inside 3D Printing Conference in NYC, and revealed the latest news on HP's entry plan for their Multi Jet Fusion 3D technology. Schiller announced, in addition to new details about the platform's capabilities, that the first Multi Jet Fusion 3D printer will be ready by the end of 2016. While that's still 18 months to wait, it provides HP with more time to forge new partnerships, such as their already established partnership with Autodesk to integrate the Spark Platform. Also on HP's docket are the launch of a new 3D printing consortium, as well as illustrations of just what it means for Multi Fusion technology to be so much faster than existing platforms, announcements of other materials technologies, and more. Read about them in the full story: http://3dprint.com/59206/hp-multi-jet-fusion-update/

[curious aardvark]

Hmm well in 18 months it's not going to be faster than other platforms. Some of the dlp resin technology is already faster.

And this is an industry where somebody brings out something new every few days.

Don't think hp have quite grasped how fast this technology is moving (they DON'T seem to be using rapid prototyping themselves). They seem to be still looking at it as a conventional piece of technology.

ie: 3 years of development and then launch into a captive market.

I don't care how shiny and integrated (don't really like that word when it comes to software) their software is - at the end of the day it's the hardware that counts and they're really dragging their feet on that.
Big mistake.

[Brian_Krassenstein]

Last month Hewlett-Packard announced that they would be splitting their company into two separate companies. Now known as Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, the first would focus entirely on their server and data center technology while HP Inc. would focus on the printer and personal computer portion of the business. HP Inc CEO Dion Weisler has also separated the printer side of the business from the 3D Printer side and put senior VP of imaging and printing Steve Nigro in charge of a new 3D Printing business group.

[eel]

There several important parameters to be evaluated before we can conclude how competitive is the HP 3D printer:
1. How easy it is to clean the parts and handle the removed powder
2. How brittle are the parts. The HP strength demo with car lifting was not convincing. The real criteria is the brittleness of 1/2mm - 1mm walls and pins. This actually defines the fine parts printability.
3. How vivid are the colours.
4. How rough is the surface of the parts.

Without knowing those parameters it is hard to conclude whether this printer is just another industrial 3D printer comparable with SSYS or 3D System/Zcorp or a major breakthrough in 3D printing.

[Brian_Krassenstein]

Hewlett Packard, although coming out of the gate last year with great excitement and enthusiasm regarding their entry into 3D printing, is under a bit of a cloud currently with thousands more layoffs emerging as the company splits in two formally as of November 1^st. While layoffs are meant to offset debt, they further plan to use 3D printing as a new recipe for success and reinvention, as well as relying on printing and personal systems sales and support as an ongoing income supply. Read more at 3DPrint.com: http://3dprint.com/96040/hp-layoffs-focus-on-3d-print/