In today’s fast-paced world, every working day counts to bring a new product to market. At the same time, technological progress has dramatically accelerated the traditional product life cycle in recent years. Innovations in advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and digitization are enabling companies to bring new products to market faster than ever before. To stay ahead of the competition, many companies turn to 3D printing. Additive manufacturing has long been used as a prototyping tool – recent developments in the field have helped to increase speed, improve mechanical properties and reduce production costs. With the launch of HP Jet Fusion 3D printers, companies are benefiting from rapid prototyping and an easier transition to full production.
Innovation requires iteration. Designers can go through dozens of ideas before settling on a final design, making iterations time-consuming and costly. With HP Multi Jet Fusion technology, designers have the freedom to produce multiple prototypes in the time it takes to produce a single part. This significantly speeds up the testing of prototypes and the design of the final product.
Compared to other 3D printing technologies that print point by point (rather than layer by layer), HP Jet Fusion devices can print parts in a fraction of the time. “Reduced print times, design freedom and improved part quality have streamlined our design process,” says Andy Boyes, program manager at Sigmadesign. “The ability to quickly produce durable nylon parts has improved our design capabilities. We have made many elements in the HP Multi Jet Fusion technology. We have saved thousands of dollars in the process compared to traditional production methods. Design constraints disappear when you print parts with HP Multi Jet Fusion technology.”
The properties of the materials used for 3D printing in HP Jet Fusion devices are ideal for prototyping and allow customers to make decisions about the final appearance of their parts. HP Multi Jet Fusion technology allows you to quickly create highly isotropic parts, i.e. parts that have similar mechanical properties and a homogeneous structure. “The isotropic behavior is needed so that the designer doesn’t have to spend time providing additional information about the part’s properties,” says Boyes.
HP prints with engineering grade thermoplastics and high dimensional accuracy. This enables the creation of parts that can pass rigorous design tests to verify their final fit and form. When creating a new product, there are often two projects: one for printing prototypes, the other for the production of a given part.
“When you’re developing a product, it’s really the final part at any point in the design process,” said Gabriel Boutin, president of Syncro Innovation, an industrial design firm in Quebec, Canada, and founder of Kupol, a new company that designs and manufactures bicycle helmets.
Kupol designed some of the first bicycle helmet prototypes using HP Multi Jet Fusion technology and has now started production on an HP Jet Fusion 4200 3D printer in partnership with Sculpteo, the 3D printing company that owns the machine. Boutin explains that HP 3D printing not only allowed him to reduce time to market, but also to be more creative.
“When you don’t have to think in two different ways – for prototyping and production, and you can only focus on one thing, you can allow yourself to be more creative,” said Boutin. “Thanks to the speed of the HP Jet Fusion 3D printers, we saved at least a third of the time compared to other methods. There is no better way to create a product.”
For companies like Kupol that have short production runs and need to produce complex and durable parts, 3D HP Jet Fusion is a fast and affordable manufacturing solution.
“We do a lot of prototypes and final parts at the same time,” Burns said. “Additive manufacturing was not the original idea of the company. In the end, factors such as the economy, printability and design flexibility of the HP Jet Fusion 3D devices were decisive for its choice.”
