HP Announces End-to-End Metal 3D Printing Partnerships Ahead of Formnext 2023

In time for Formnext 2023 (November 7-10 in Frankfurt, Germany), HP, the pioneer in metal binder jetting (MBJ) additive manufacturing (AM), announced several major partnerships surrounding its Metal Jet S100 platform. One partnership is a strategic collaboration with leading AM innovator and longtime HP partner, GKN Additive, involving introductory qualification of a range of new metal powders, ten of which are different grades of steel, including M2 tool steel.

HP also announced a new collaboration with another existing partner, Sandvik, which will enable Metal Jet customers to access Sandvik superalloys and 316L, the low-carbon version of 316 stainless steel. Finally, HP announced collaborations with two new partners, debind and sinter leader Elnik (and its sister business DSH Technologies), as well as a strategic Metal Jet partnership with Indo-MIM, the world’s largest supplier of powders for metal injection molding (MIM), and an emerging player in the metal AM space.

In a press release about one of HP’s several new partnerships surrounding the Metal Jet platform, the collaboration with Elnik/DSH Technologies for post-processing, Ramon Pastor, global head of 3D Metals at HP, said, “This collaboration equips customers using HP’s commercial S100 Metal Jet Solution with advanced sintering capabilities, opening up new horizons in 3D printing for industries worldwide.”

Stefan Joens, president of Elnik Systems, said, “Working together with the HP team has been amazing. The mutual interest to see the Metal 3D printing technology advance through team-effort discussion, innovation, and desire is what will help this manufacturing technology become a fully capable processing method of the future.”

Attendees of Formnext 2023 can find out more about HP’s new metals partnerships, along with other aspects of the company’s 3D printing portfolio, at booth D41 in Hall 12.1.

Although HP’s MBJ platform has been available via service bureaus for years, it is worth recalling that the S100 has only been on the commercial market since September 2022. Thus, such a heightened expansion of the metal powders available for the S100, combined with HP’s increased focus on post-processing, indicates the turning point between a successful post-launch first year and an accelerated push towards production-level scale.

This is precisely the push that Ramon Pastor anticipated in an interview with me published earlier this year: “In observing what this technology can help companies achieve, industry leaders like HP are developing add-on automation services that further improve [AM] scalability and output as operations along the entire production line become increasingly automated…”

The development of a much more diverse range of metals offerings is the most crucial thing to pay attention to here, as it suggests a great number of new applications unlocked by HP’s MBJ platform are likely in the works. With giant corporations in critical sectors across the globe suddenly in desperate need of the exact advantages that MBJ can deliver, HP’s string of announcements should have everyone in the AM sector excited about 2024.