HP takes printing expertise into the third dimension

Hewlett-Packard is an old hand at printing. One of the pioneers of the personal computing market, the company has many decades experience of two-dimensional printing, and has seen revolutions in the technology of printing heads in both its consumer and industrial markets. Now, it is leveraging that expertise into the 3D printing and additive manufacturing worlds, and has a novel approach to keeping costs down.

“In general, in the additive world you buy your machine from the OEM and you have to source material through the same OEM or their sales network,” explained Paul Gately, business manager for 3D printing on HP’s stand in the dedicated 3D printing zone (Hall 6, stand 740). “At HP, we sell a printing solution; we don’t want to develop their own materials, so we work directly with plastics manufacturers to certify their materials to work on our machines. That makes it more open source, and it gets the parts cost – in this case, the materials you are printing – down. Parts cost, along with throughput – that is, the time taken to reduce the part – are the two major factors for customers to decide whether additive manufacturing is cost-effective for them.