HP’s 3D Metal Printing Heralds Potential Manufacturing Transformation
Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in manufacturing often call up images of inter-connected and self-correcting autonomous robots, pushing out a flurry of widgets with a minimum of human intervention. This is about to change.
At Chicago’s International Manufacturing Technology trade show last week, computer giant HP unveiled its HP Metal Jet, a 3D printing technology that brings a new aspect to digital transformation in the $12 trillion manufacturing industry.
Like most 3D printers that create objects from composite materials like plastics and carbon fiber, HP Metal Jet crafts precision parts and products. And unlike any other 3D printing tech, HP Metal Jet works with stainless steel. The California company says it prints parts with greater reliability and lower operating costs than competing technologies for metals fabrication.
Volumizing 2D Pixels to make 3D Products
At the core of HP’s Metal Jet tech is the “voxel,” a volumetric representation of the two-dimensional pixels that comprise digital displays. Using computer tomography, an application long at work in medical imaging, depth is added to flat-screen pixels, in turn producing voxels.
With computer-aided design software, engineers can impart material properties to tomographic representations, issuing them with rigidity, texture, color, and able to calculate tensile strength. Voxels can also be bound together to produce the desired properties of physical objects.
Sweden’s Digital Metal, a subsidiary of multinational metal power Hoganas, and Boston-based startup Desktop Metal, have introduced 3D systems for precision and small-scale metal printing at prices well below the $800,000 cost of conventional machines. The latter permits production in office settings.
Economic Construction Methods
HP’s method is based on its legacy photocopier technology – the precision placement of metals extruded layer-by-layer through printer nozzles reduces the amount of binding material used in a process that is a boon to the manufacturing sector as it eliminates the need for machine tools and dies that are key elements of production.
The innovation has been accomplished by using twice the number of print-bar templates of the object carried within the 3D printer, thus reducing by a magnitude of four the attendant nozzle redundancy that occurs during printing, when extruded materials clog the jets.
Priced at around $400,000, HP Metal Jet printers will hit the market in 2020. In the interim, the company is working with several partners to provide a range of industries with products via its Metal Jet Production Service, expected to be underway in early 2019.
Mass-Part Production Times Reduced
UK-based GKN Powder Metallurgy is one of the international partners working with HP. As a global supplier of precision parts to aviation, automotive and machine-tool sectors, GKN initially will produce parts for Germany’s Volkswagen and for Wilo, a German producer of industrial pumps and water systems.
GKN company officials say the technology can cut mass-part production time from months to weeks. Accompanying this efficiency is an opportunity to further the business’ digital transformation.
In addition to the production and sale of of some three billion parts and components, GKN earns a portion of its $14 billion annual revenue from production systems and design expertise. The affordability of HP Metal Jet printers means that manufacturers can globally incorporate the product in their factories, and with relative ease.
California’s Parmatech, a supplier of precision metal products used in medical and other devices, also is a partner in the production service: The subsidiary of Rhode Island holding company ATW will mass-produce instrument parts and create custom-designed prostheses using HP printers.
Alongside automotive, hydraulic and medical applications, HP envisages a broad spectrum of use for the technology it describes as a catalyst in the “fourth industrial revolution.” It’s a claim that has gained currency among tech giants aiming to disrupt traditional processes – and one not without similar boilerplate disclaimers.
