HP’s New Jet Fusion 3D Printer

Hewlett-Packard, the American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, has recently started accepting orders for their first 3D printer named the HP Jet Fusion printer. Hewlett-Packard has said that their new Jet Fusion printer will reduce the cost of manufacturing parts in half while also operating at speeds ten times faster than existing machines today.

Hewlett-Packard revealed two initial models at the RAPID 3D additive manufacturing conference. The company will now be taking orders for these two models: the lower production and lower cost 3200 series as well as the 4200 series. The 3200 series will be available towards the middle of 2017, while the 4200 series will start to be shipped to manufacturers in October. These Jet Fusion printers were initially unveiled by Hewlett-Packard in October of 2014. The company believes that their new Jet Fusion printers will allow for mass production of components through the use of additive manufacturing (or 3D printing), as opposed to just rapid prototyping, which is what 3D printing is typically used for.

“The computer printers will also revolutionize 3D printing in that they will be able to print electronics in the parts they create through the use of conductive materials printed at the voxel level. Like a pixel in a display, a voxel in 3D printing is a tiny cube, millions of which make up a larger object. A single voxel is 50 microns in size,” stated Lucas Mearian from Computer World. “HP's Jet Fusion printers have a print area or a print bin of 16-in. x 12-in. x 16-in. Within that area, there are 2.4 teravoxels (a teravoxel is a trillion voxels).”

"So parts are fused together at a very small level -- almost at the molecular level, and that helps give them a spectacular strength," said the marketing director of Hewlett-Packard’s 3D printing, Alex Monino. "Imagine the possibilities of this in world of the Internet of Things, where not only every product is connected but every part in every product connected."

"Now, imagine the car of the future where every part is transmitting information," added Monino. "And, parts can be visibly or invisibly printed with ink that can only be seen with UV light, so you can print parts that ensure products cannot be counterfeited.”