High-speed printing looks to be next frontier for 3D printing. With HP set to debut a high-speed system in the next year 3DSystems has counter the computer giant's offering with a rapid AM system of the their own.
"We often take for granted how productive a minute can be. In the next sixty seconds, 58 airplanes will take off, 116 people will get married and lightning will strike Earth 360 times. In 3D printing, time is often used to conceptualize progress. In that vein, we invite you to conceptualize our Continuous, High-Speed, Fab-Grade 3D Printer, which takes supreme advantage of each minute to jet out four billion drops of precision-placed, color material. As compared to the speed of today’s other jetted 3D printers, this revolutionary new machine is about 50 times faster.
But four billion drops per minute is more than cool trivia; it’s a rate of speed that is changing manufacturing. To create one-off, personalized products, traditional manufacturing (using subtractive methods) is often slow and prohibitively expensive. In contrast, the Continuous High-Speed, Fab-Grade 3D Printer makes on-demand customized production viable for the first time ever with a combination of unlimited design freedom, pinpoint accuracy and blazing speed. This groundbreaking machine seamlessly brings all the benefits of full-color 3D printing onto the production floor enabling consumer product creators, manufacturers, engineers and more to dream up new designs by the minute instead of by the week or month."
So, 3DSystems' new printer design appears to borrows a bit from the assembly line and updates it with a few jetting printheads.
Will the AM-giant's new tech lead more industries to adopt 3D printing? If we're just talking about plastic parts can this new machine compete with injection molding for price and production scale over time?
I'm not sure if there's an answer to that question just yet, however it does appear that the AM industry as a whole is growing out of it "wonder-tech" phase and is seriously striving to build technologies that can bring about the oft-promised "next industrial revolution".
That's a good thing.
Source: 3DSystems