This is the second part of our interview with Ramon Pastor, global head and general manager of HP 3D Metal and HP Barcelona Site general manager. To read the first part, click here.

While most 3D printers today are dedicated to producing plastic pieces, the economies of scale of injection molding still make 3D printing slow and expensive for mass production of identical parts. 

In 3D printing, unlike traditional manufacturing, the cost per unit is not dependent on volume. 3D printing also allows the same parts to be produced with exactly the same specs anywhere in the world, thus saving the additional cost of transportation and making production more sustainable. In the supply chain, 3D printing can eliminate inventory-holding costs and is the embodiment of just-in-time.

GKN Powder Metallurgy and HP Metal Jet functional metal part – Courtesy of HP

According to Ramon Pastor, the problem with 3D printing is that it competes with the most efficient technology in the world, injection molding. He argues that the industry is now focusing on the overall equipment effectiveness of 3D printing and on areas where it can compete. Those areas are distributed manufacturing, personalization, and small and medium runs of complex parts.

Additionally, HP and other manufacturers are already experimenting with other materials such as high-temperature glass and fabrics, but those solutions are still some years away from being commercially viable.

In the past few years, HP has been investing heavily in 3D metal printing. While it is difficult to compete in plastics, producing metal parts by 3D printing could be much more efficient than some traditional systems. Pastor argues that, in metal manufacturing, 3D has the considerable advantage of adding a much more efficient process to get to a near-net shape of a part.

The following is a transcription, edited for clarity, of the second part of our conversation with Ramon Pastor.

EPSNews: Talking about current technologies and what’s coming, 3D printing is constantly improving, and there are new things that you can produce, including new materials and new processes. Can you give us a glimpse of the current developments, including metal printing?

Ramon Pastor: Let me start with the plastics part and then go into metals. On plastics, the problem in 3D is that you’re competing with probably the most efficient technology in the world, which is injection molding. 

Injection molding is so, so efficient. Many people have mastered this. So, unless you go to a specific use case: rich production, personalization, high mix type of things, or different materials, you can’t compete. It would be best if you continually found the reason for 3D printing, because on low cost, head to head when you go to meaningful runs, it’s really hard to compete.

This reality check comes after some years of the 3D printing industry doing some bells and whistles, creating products based on speeds and fits, and promising the moon.

We are in a moment of facing reality and investing a lot in making 3D a production tool. We are investing in materials. We’re investing in faster printers. 

Where we are primarily investing is making sure that the viability, the repeatability, and the accuracy are there. In the end, the key metric for our customers is the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Basically, we want to make sure that we look at the uptime that our machines have. What is the yield that they have? What is the quality? What is the productivity? To make sure that this is a full-time tool in a production line.

Without changing the platform, a lot of investment is moving from 80 percent OEE to 90 percent OEE to 95 percent OEE. This is no big marketing splash, and I think that the industry is tired of marketing splashes. What they need, really, is real, real production tools. 

This is where we’re focusing 90 percent of our efforts: to make sure that the OEE is there and our customers that want to scale, actually can scale. 

EPSNews: Recently, you announced new advances in metal 3D technology. What can you tell us, and why is this so important for HP?

Ramon Pastor: On metals, I’m actually very excited this year because this is the year we are launching our metal technology. And this will be great, because of the differences with the plastic world.

We are not competing with anything similar to injection molding. Metal is not the case. The equivalent to injection molding in metals, MIMS, it’s a very niche type of player, producing very small parts. And, if you look at the sophistication of the technologies in metal, a lot of them actually come from the [Ancient] Egyptians.

Therefore, apart from all the values of 3D printing on geometry, freedom, personalization, short runs, time to part, etc., in metals, you have the considerable advantage of adding a much more efficient process to get to a near net shape of a metal part.

Now, this is only applicable to Binder Jetting, metal additive manufacturing. The traditional 3D printing technologies, which are based on melting, are still slow and expensive. But the new generation of binder jetting technologies, which HP is going to be one of the first with it, but there are other companies, have the promise actually to get to a course that is going to unlock a lot of applications in reproduction. 

We are finding that, in many cases, we have customers that are thinking about productions on the millions of the same part, not different SKUs. They find an economic value proposition versus the traditional way to make [metal parts]. 

And to me, this it’s totally different. This is why I’m very, very excited about it.

EPSNews: Ramon, thank you so much for your time and sharing with us your views on the market, the supply chain challenges, and the possibilities of the new metal technologies. 

Pablo Valerio has been in the IT industry for 25+ years. While primarily based in Barcelona, he has also worked in the United States, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, and Denmark. For the past 10 years he has been a regular contributor to several publications in electronics, communications, mobility, and smart cities. His work appears in EE Times, IoT Times, InformationWeek, EBN, LightReading, Network Computing, and IEEE Spectrum, among others. Pablo holds a MS in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University.

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