30 years ago I started on a journey to bring 3D Pprinting from prototyping to manufacturing. My initial economic analysis in 1999 comparing 3D printing to injection molding led to me filing the original patents for “print and fuse” based Polymer Powder Bed Fusion (PPBF) in 2003. My vision was clear: remove lasers from PPBF to enable scalable manufacturing.
Over the lastthose 30 years, polymer powder bed fusion (PPBF) has evolved from an exciting prototyping technology into a genuine manufacturing process very much as I had envisaged. Today, we see production applications across industries ranging from automotive to consumer products, supported by an increasingly diverse ecosystem of machine manufacturers and material suppliers.
That is exactly what I hoped to see when I first developed printhead-based powder bed fusion. The industry has matured, innovation is accelerating, and customers now have more choice than ever before.
The evolution of has been PPBF fascinating.
Laser-based systems established the foundations of the industry and continue to offer prototyping solutions and advantages for specialist applications with and advanced materials. Printhead-based PBF, meanwhile, is delivering on my original intent: to enable high-volume production with lower cost per part and a scalable manufacturing process.
Seeing multiple suppliers now developing different versions of printhead-based PPBF—including SAF®, HP Multi Jet Fusion (MJF), and voxeljet High Speed Sintering (HSS)—is rewarding and exactly what I had hoped to see when I filed the original print and fuse patents in 2003. Together, these technologies have grown into a market that has generated well over US$1 billion in sales, demonstrating the lasting impact of printhead-based PPBF.
As PPBF moves firmly into production, one lesson has become increasingly clear: manufacturing is always about balancing trade-offs.
For PPBF, factors such as nesting density, powder refresh ratio, build speed and part quality are all interconnected. Increasing nesting density can reduce cost per part. Increasing recycled powder content can lower material costs. But both can also influence dimensional accuracy, mechanical performance and surface quality if the process is not carefully controlled.
There is no single setting that simultaneously maximises every performance metric. Understanding those trade-offs is what separates successful manufacturing from impressive demonstrations.
This helps explain why SAF has increasingly been adopted for volume manufacturing. SAF incurs but is less prone to the trade-offs outlined above as it avoids using fast-scanning lasers or cooling fluid on the bed, both of which generate surface defects such as “Orange Peel” and “Elephant Skin”.
This is why marketing claims should always be viewed in context.
It is entirely possible to present an excellent-looking demonstration part produced at low nesting density and high virgin powder content while separately simultaneously showing presentations with highly nested production builds, but not physical parts from those builds. Unless those results were achieved together, customers are not seeing the complete picture.
The important question is not whether a machine can produce an exceptional part.
The important question is whether it can produce that same quality repeatedly, at production nesting densities, using realistic powder recycling strategies, every day.
That is manufacturing.
The same thinking applies to economics. Purchase price is only one part of the equation. Total cost of ownership depends on nesting density, powder refresh ratio, labour, yield and, critically, part quality. Producing low-quality parts that must be scrapped or reworked is one of the fastest ways to increase cost per part.
When we developed SAF technology, we recognised these trade-offs from the beginning. Rather than publishing isolated performance figures, we wanted customers to understand how the technology performs under real manufacturing conditions. We did not hide the trade-offs.
That is why our initial material data sheets included data from more than 30 builds, over 1,000 tensile specimens, built across the entire build volume on multiple machines and at multiple manufacturing locations.
More importantly, we deliberately measured mechanical performance, dimensional accuracy and aesthetics using parts from the same builds. Experienced users of powder bed fusion know that optimizing one characteristic, such as part strength, can often compromise another characteristic, such as accuracy. It has been unfortunately common for machine vendors to quote mechanical properties from one build and accuracy from another build. We believed our customers deserved data that reflected those real engineering compromises rather than idealised single-point results.
This philosophy of transparency has helped establish confidence in demanding production environments where consistency matters far more than isolated peak performance.
Today, SAF is being used in industrial production, including automotive applications where machines operate around the clock to supply end-use components for manufacturing lines.
In these environments, success is not measured by a demonstration part or a headline specification. It is measured by repeatability, predictable yields and confidence that every build will deliver the required quality.
As our industry continues to grow, I believe we all have a responsibility to present technology honestly and transparently. The future of PPBF is exceptionally bright, with multiple suppliers bringing different innovations to market. That diversity will continue to accelerate adoption.
But customers should ask deeper questions than they have in the past.
At what nesting density were these parts produced? What powder refresh ratio was used? Were the published mechanical properties, dimensional accuracy and surface finish all measured from the same production builds? How repeatable are those results over time? How reliant is the process on manual finishing and what is the time and cost of labor?
Understanding those trade-offs is ultimately far more valuable than comparing headline specifications.
Because manufacturing has never been about producing one impressive part.
It has always been about producing thousands of identical parts, economically, predictably and with confidence. I am proud to have played my part over the last 30-years in getting the industry to where it is today and I feel a responsibility to ensure that, as an industry, we continue to progress the technology through transparency and proof. Most of all – I am excited about the future of PPBF.
