The Multi-Jet Fusion is Amazing

As part of our work at Phasio we often work with additive manufacturers who are scaling up production and offering end-use parts to their clients. One of the most important machines to assist a manufacturer during this transition is the Multi-Jet Fusion from Hewlett Packard.

While a lot has been written about the printer from a technical perspective, I want to provide some information about why it’s so important for the maturity of additive at large. We’ll start by reviewing some technical details about how the machine works and then dive into the business strategy and decision making that causes additive companies become MJF companies.

Why is the Multi-Jet Fusion so important?

The MJF was developed by Hewlett Packard and the first model released in 2016. It was quite the revolution at the time as it promised to allow manufacturers to produce parts additively, but at scale. This is important because it had historically been extremely difficult to ensure re-reproducibility in the additive process, sometimes bringing into question the quality of these components.

The Multi-Jet Fusion represents a balancing act between consistent quality and speed of production. Notably, there is no minimum batch size for an MJF-produced part. From an economic standpoint, it’s important that the manufacturer fills the build chamber, but it doesn’t matter whether the build chamber is full of identical or different parts. This is usually accounted for by a nesting solution, like Magics.

So finally we have a manufacturing technology that allows a batch size of 1 at an economical price, but also offers consistent part quality. This creates a natural business case for high-quality, low lead-time parts manufacturing.

So how does the MJF achieve it’s excellent results?

How the Multi-Jet Fusion works

There are 3 parts to how a Multi-Jet Fusion works. You have:

1. The print bed — the bed upon which powder is placed and your part is built
2. The recoater — the machine which swings over the print bed and dispenses powder onto it
3. The thermal inkjet array — a system which swings over the print bed, applies a chemical agent and heats the bed causing the powder to bind

This process happens in a layer-by-layer fashion, gradually building up the part one layer at a time. At the end of the process, you’ll have a big cube of powder, some of which has been solidified into a solid part.

This big chunk of powder and solidified material (often referred to as ‘the Build’) is removed from the machine, but still contained inside of a metal box as it needs to stay together while it sits and cools, usually for around 24 hours.

After 24 hours has passed, the material is removed from it’s build chamber, de-powdered, and the individual parts are pulled away from each other. At this point, the parts are ready to undergo further processing and quality control.

Now you might be asking, “but surely other people have tried this before?” and you’d surely be right! Many engineering hurdles were overcome as part of the development of the MJF, but the business model that  HP applied has helped too.

Namely, HP has made the Multi-Jet Fusion an end-to-end solution complete with a global support and training program which ensures the machines are used according to their design spec. They’ve also developed a robust software ecosystem that surrounds the machine, offering monitoring and operational support alike.

So now that we understand how the Multi-Jet Fusion works, lets talk about what makes it so revolutionary.

The business case for MJF

When we talk about the business case for an MJF owner, we’re really talking about the business case for the customers of that manufacturer, as they’re the people buying the parts.

This is often the point at which disaster strikes in additive. The people operating the machines are excited to do business, but they often struggle to convey exactly what they can offer to their customers. When they do figure it out, it’s usually one of:

1. A digital inventory
   The manufacturer offers a website wherein customers can re-order parts whenever needed, featuring fast-turnaround time so the part can be manufactured just-in-time, saving the client warehousing costs
2. Customizable manufacturing
   Clients want to have a part customized at scale, for example, a medical orthotic which generally  follows a consistent design but needs minor modifications for each patient
3. Rapid prototyping of a new product
   The manufacturer might be located near a large number of startups or product development labs, many of whom want to have a physical prototype of the part in order to further their project

However, these business cases are only viable if the manufacturer can offer consistent material properties and a small minimum batch size. As noted above, this is the territory in which the MJF is king.

So from the perspective of the end user, it’s important to have a strong business case related to one of these 3 use-cases, but what about the manufacturer? What’s their business case?

As noted before, the MJF creates parts in ‘a Build’. This means that, regardless of how many parts you have, the machine will be completely utilized whether you are producing 1 part or 100 parts. Herein lies a major operational challenge with MJF printing, known as Nesting.

Nesting is the process of squeezing as many parts into the build chamber as possible. It sounds and feels simple, but actually this is an abstraction (a rather painful one, too) of the Knapsack problem which is NP-complete.

We’ve written about Nesting in more detail here, so you can read more about it if you’d like. But the tldr is, a higher nesting ratio means better machine utilization, which means more margins for a manufacturer.

In practice, this means there are 2 important topics for Multi-Jet Fusion owners to consider. They are getting enough business and operating with sufficient efficiency.

Achieving success with the Multi-Jet Fusion

As this article has highlighted, the Multijet Fusion is a wonderful machine with a broad range of use cases. However, in order to be successful with the machine, you need to build a business model around it.

Customers rarely understand Multijet Fusion well enough to know that they need it. Many people are unfamiliar with additive in general, they’ve certainly not heard of a Multijet Fusion. Consequently manufacturers need to bridge the knowledge gap for their customers, creating opportunities for clients to easily order from them and therefore an opportunity to turn one-time orders into repeat customers.

Finally, creating a production system which offers a balance between operational efficiency, traceability and compliance with a quality system is challenging.

Phasio is a software platform designed to help Multi-Jet Fusion manufacturers grow their business and facilitate smooth operations within the facility. By utilizing advanced software like Phasio, MJF manufacturers can create lasting relationships with clients and develop a reputation for delivering high-quality products to end customers.