ADDMAN was already paying other service bureaus to print parts when it announced plans to add 81 HP Jet Fusion 5620 Pro systems. Forecast 3D, an early HP production partner that ADDMAN acquired, had been sending work out as investment in its own fleet slowed. By the time François Minec spoke to 3D Printing Industry, several bureaus were doing work for ADDMAN and new printers were going in.
Minec, HP’s global head of sales and business development for additive manufacturing, declined to put a figure on the outsourced work. He described a “very big part” of the investment as firm. The full expansion would take ADDMAN’s Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) fleet to more than 125 systems. Hiring operators and getting electrical capacity in place would help determine how quickly ADDMAN could install them.
How much of that fleet will bring existing orders back in-house remains a question for ADDMAN. What Minec provided details on is why he expects service bureaus to buy printers in larger batches, and why some of HP’s most important sales work takes place with companies that may ultimately pay somebody else to print their parts.
When a run of 10,000 comes within reach
Minec held up the example of a part the size of his fist. A few years ago, he said, a run of 100 might have been a good fit for MJF. Today, depending on the part, a bureau could make a case for printing 10,000 against a competing quote for injection moulding. The significance for the bureau is that there are, in his experience, many more runs of 10,000 available to bid for. Winning even a few changes how much machine time it can sell.
Minec estimates that the balance of work he sees, particularly among service bureaus, has shifted from roughly half production and half prototyping to nearer 80% production by volume. He credits some of that shift to a relatively prosaic improvement in the 5600 series over the 5200. The result from one printer became easier to reproduce on the next.
Ocado helped shape that work. With machines in Mexico, the UK and Sweden, the company needed to know how closely one printer would match another. Minec said HP had worked on calibration across the network. He acknowledged that consistency on the earlier generation had fallen short of what some industrial production work now requires.
Powder accounts for another part of the economics. In Minec’s simplified example, measured by mass, printing one kilo of parts at 10% packing density with a 20% powder refresh rate means discarding another kilo of powder. He said customers were packing builds around four percentage points more densely on average than three years earlier. Some now use almost all their powder, although processes such as blasting leave material that cannot be recovered. Minec gave no finished-part cost for an ADDMAN programme. The crossover with moulding will depend on what comes out of the build and what it costs to finish it.
What a bureau with 35 print settings can sell
When 3D Printing Industry previously spoke to Minec in Berlin in 2023, he acknowledged that customers had been asking HP for a more open system for years. An operator of a 5600 can now access 35 process parameters, he said, including agent settings and layer thickness. HP trains customers to use them.
One group of customers wanted to move from 90-micron layers to 110 microns. Their parts needed less detail and the thicker layer let them print faster. Enough customers asked for the change that, at the time of the interview, HP was preparing a high-productivity print mode. Other bureaus were willing to spend longer on a build for finer detail or particular mechanical properties.
For two bureaus quoting on the same job with the same model of printer, those choices leave room to compete. Bureaus have long distinguished themselves by the finish they can deliver. Minec sees similar value in letting each develop “their own print mode, which is their signature”.
Finishing is also where the limits of automation become apparent. Minec said an HP printer could run two successive jobs, roughly 24 hours of printing, without an operator intervening. “What do you do after that?” he asked. Consider a bureau turning out 20,000 parts a day for customers with different specifications. Someone still has to get the powder off, identify the parts and route some for black dye and others for vapour smoothing. A regular order from one large customer presents a different sorting problem from a day’s work for hundreds of smaller ones.
The million-dollar application
In 2022, the former HP Global President & CEO – 3D Printing Division Didier Deltort told 3D Printing Industry he had walked through HP’s application showroom asking which of the parts on display had become million-dollar businesses. Few qualified. Asked the same question four years later, Minec pointed to drones and cranial helmets. While not disclosing revenue figures, he did provide an example of what makes an application valuable to the buyer. One unnamed drone manufacturer had been spending eight hours assembling a unit. After working with HP on the design, Minec said, it could finish assembly in about half an hour.
HP expects manufacturers to develop such applications on its smaller 1200 printer and place volume orders with production bureaus. Minec said other customers were already buying systems “by the dozen”. That step change matters for HP. A showroom part can demonstrate what a machine will make. A manufacturer placing repeat orders can keep a bureau’s machines occupied and eventually give it reason to buy another.
“Don’t try to sell printers,” Minec advised. Develop the application with the end customer, he said, and the equipment order follows. “It makes my job to sell printers much easier.”
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Featured image shows HP in China. Photo by Michael Petch.
