HP quietly announced a very interesting new material.
HP’s MJF polymer 3D printing process is widely used in manufacturing and requires powder materials. Currently, they offer about a dozen different material variants of PA11, PA12, TPU, TPA, and PP.
The company announced the general availability of a new material, HP 3D HR PA 11 Gen2, by the end of this year. While they already have two PA11 variants, this one is quite different. They explain:
“The material offers the best PA 11 reusability in the market, delivering up to 80% powder reusability and reducing part costs by up to 40% compared to the previous generations.”
The issue they’re solving is powder reuse. When a print job takes place, not all of the powder is made into objects and remains loose in the build chamber. It’s tempting to simply use that powder again, but unfortunately, the powder’s properties are altered by the print process, even if it was not made part of the objects. The MJF process involves a significant and long heating process for the entire building chamber, affecting all the powder.
Normally, the used powder can be re-used in subsequent print jobs, but only up to a certain ratio. Typically, it’s around 50-70%, meaning a new job would require 30-50% fresh powder.
This is important because it affects the total cost of printed objects. The cost of an object isn’t just the cost of the material making up the object — it also includes whatever amount of powder was “wasted” by the printing process.
Here, the waste is effectively the used powder that you cannot re-use due to the ratio limit.
Additive manufacturing operations can try to reduce this effect by jamming in as many parts into the build chamber as possible, thereby reducing the amount of used powder. But there will always be used powder, and you can’t re-use all of it. That adds to the effective cost of a part produced with MJF.
The new material changes that equation. By increasing the re-use ratio up to 80%, they are effectively lowering the cost to produce parts. Less powder in total is used to produce parts.
HP says the material could allow operators to reduce the part costs by up to 40%, which is substantial. However, this is an “up to” number, and the actual savings are highly dependent on the circumstances: how many parts are made, the density of parts in the build chamber, etc.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of large-scale installations of MJF systems that are used daily. Even a slight change in savings would add up tremendously for these production operations.
The material might even open up more sales for HP, as some prospects may suddenly realize their application is now financially feasible if this material is used.
Via HP
