"HP's vision is to create a more personal, healthier and sustainable world through Additive Manufacturing"

Can you please elaborate on the MJF-technology, and highlight the key advantages and what makes it so unique? What can HP do that others can't?

HP is helping accelerate digital transformation for the industry with its Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing solution which delivers breakthrough economics, manufacturing predictability, and innovative materials to help enable entirely new applications. With the HP Digital Manufacturing Network, HP provides access to a global network of partners and parts providers to assist in the management and automation of complex 3D printing workflows and large-scale additive manufacturing fleets. Many of our partners and customers leverage our portfolio of additive manufacturing offerings including 3D Factory Services, software solutions including HP 3D API and HP 3D Center, and hardware solutions such as HP Automatic Unpacking Station. In addition, HP encourages partners and customers to take advantage of HP’s 3D-as-a-Service (3DaaS) business model to more quickly scale by unlocking capital flexibility and improving business agility. The model proved hugely beneficial during the volatility of the COVID-19 pandemic and is being increasingly adopted across HP’s customer base.

How would you describe the overall vision at HP 3D-printing? From your point of view, what is the potential of Additive Manufacturing as a future technology?

HP’s vision is to create a more personal, healthier and sustainable world through the power of additive manufacturing. Additive Manufacturing is one of the very few technologies capable to significantly transform and improve people’s life in the coming years. We’ve glimpsed over the past several years what it really means for manufacturing to be digital, agile and local. The power of this agile ecosystem and technology capabilities are proving themselves in the most demanding of circumstances.

We believe companies, governments and suppliers will recognize the impact of end-to-end, fully digital business models. Industries will look at 3D printing as a way to disrupt their traditional supply chains and to enable mass personalization for customers.

How do you plan to achieve this vision and what are currently the toughest challenges?

We enable our customers, partners, communities, and colleagues to challenge conventional thinking and deliver entirely new innovations. Our data driven additive manufacturing solution help transform industries with unprecedent personalization, performance and design possibilities.

The toughest challenges are to drive adoption and confidence in additive manufacturing solutions in industries that have historically relied on and invested in traditional manufacturing industries. In addition to put pressure on ourselves to set the industry’s highest standard for Part Performance, Part Quality, Part Consistency and personalization at a reasonable cost, and that is not an easy task. It is a challenge we embrace and want to deliver on for our partners and customers!

Additive Manufacturing is often seen as a technology for rapid prototyping, rapid tooling, and small series. How do you access the potential for high-volume projects with quantities well-above 100.000 or even 1.000.000 parts per year?

First we can’t underestimate the importance of engaging with key stakeholders across the manufacturing ecosystem and within individual corporations. This includes working closely with with global OEMs and global brands that are market and/or technology leaders in their respective industries, and ensuring that leaders at the CEO and executive level are aligned with the engineering and additive teams. It has to be action and conversation happening at every level of the company.

Across manufacturing and within many of these companies work must be done to educate educate Product Designers about the possibilities offered by additive manufacturing and focus on a mindset change in order to think Additive, design Additive, produce Additive.

Finally, we believe we will achieve scale quickly through our ecosystem of partners and customers and via the HP Digital Manufacturing Network.

OECHSLER and HP have been partnering within the Additive Manufacturing field for quite a while now. Which role plays OECHSLER from your point of view for HP and in the industry?

The path to digital manufacturing requires a powerful and far reaching ecosystem of leading innovators sharing same vison – this is not only aligning on the same goals, but being willing to invest, take risks and put forward the energy to move at the same speed toward innovation. We believe we are in step with Oeschler across these important paraments. We’ve been taking significant steps together since we forged our partnership with OECHSLER in 2019.

OECHSLER has a proven track record for identifying production-capable applications that can be optimized for Multi Jet Fusion and scaled. They deliver unique know-how and capabilities in design and engineering and collaborate well with our HP team across all stages of a project.

OECHSLER understands what it takes to deliver value every step of the way -- from application design to final parts production to post-processing and automation -- and together we will grow and accelerate opportunities for our customers

Which Additive Manufacturing trends excite you?

The trends we are excited about as a business are as follows:

• In 2022 we expect a new era of mass-personalization enabled by digital manufacturing to disrupt a range of large industries, drive innovation, and create new value. Among the industries ripe for disruption is the highly personalized health and wellness sector.
• As companies look to meet the demand for more personalized products they are also looking to deliver more sustainable products and packaging. When HP surveyed global digital manufacturing and 3D printing decision makers in late-2020, an overwhelming majority (89%) said they were changing their business models, and at least 9 out of 10 were investigating new and more sustainable supply chain models.
• We are seeing companies develop new supply chain strategies for risk mitigation, not only to address the current Covid-19 crisis or future pandemics, but to guard against volatile global economic trade cycles. Advanced 3D printing solutions can help them accelerate this transformation.
• We are very excited about the promise of additive for mass metal manufacturing, the fastest growing segment of the traditional 3D printing market. Based on HP’s core Thermal Inkjet capabilities, our Metal Jet technology enables the production from high volume runs to truly unique high-value parts.