HP’s new Jet Fusion 3D Printing System, announced last month at the 2016 RAPID 3D printing and additive manufacturing conference in Orlando and set to reinvent how companies prototype and produce functional parts, started out as an under-the-radar collaboration between a small group of researchers drawn from HP Labs and HP’s printing business group.
Company leaders had observed the 3D print industry from its inception, but had yet to arrive at an approach that they could fully support, explains Lihua Zhao, senior research manager and lead for HP Labs 3D Print research. But four years ago, four engineers in HP’s Barcelona print business research lab began talking with several counterparts in HP Labs.
“They had zero budget and were just doing this as a side project in addition to their regular work,” Zhao notes of the original team of seven researchers, “but they thought 3D printing could be hugely valuable for HP if they could organically grow a new approach to the technology from within the company.”