Shapeways HP Jet Fusion 3D printing material

So HP have been making a lot of noise about their new Jet Fusion 3D printer. And Shapeways have been trialling this process. So I thought I'd give it a go.

Well. Let's just say that I wish I'd bought a couple coffees or maybe some nice cake or something. Because, well, it's not really usable for model-making at this point.

See attached. The material:

- is really roughly textured.
- there's no polishing option available - at least, not yet.
- unlike the strong white polyamide material, it's not a solid colour. The grey is all speckled. Which I guess is great if you're simulating fake granite or something.
- the printing is pretty crappy. Look at the raised strips on the door - they should be sharp right angles to the lines. But they're not. They're slightly curved, like it was a baked biscuit that rose in an oven.
- The back of the door is supposed to be perfectly flat. But the edges are slightly raised, sort of like surface tension in a glass of water causing the edges to rise up.
- It's basically the same price as white polyamide, and took a while to get printed. So the cheaper, faster, claims don't have me fully convinced.

So. I'd stick to the strong white and polished material for price-sensitive projects where the highest resolution isn't essential. And the frosted detail materials for anything which needs detail.





Anyone else try it yet? What did you think?

- nkg

Haven't tried this but you answered some questions I had so I don't need to open a new thread.

As I am almost done with my 2001 EVA Pod Interior...

https://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=277201

I was not 100% as to what material to go for. The plan was for the biggish parts ultra frosted and for details extreme frosted. I was thinking if I should go for a cheaper material such as the "strong white" but I think you answered my question so I will stick to the original plan with the Frosted stuff.

Sort of depends on your priorities. The strong white material reminds me of a sugar cube. It's pure white, and it holds corners and lines fairly crisply. But you can see this grainy texture caused by each tiny blob of plastic. The polishing process helps eliminate much of this texture but at the cost of some detail.

By contrast the liquid resin based "Frosted Detail" material holds much finer detail. But I find most objects have a side which is covered by fine raised lines spaced every millimetre or so. The appearance and height of the lines seems to depend upon the orientation of the object in the printer. They aren't resolution lines as they don't represent the finest line of which the printer is capable. But they show up every x rows of material. And these lines can look really really bad if you look closely or take a photo of a detail. I much prefer the slightly pebbly finish of resin that was in contact with support wax since that has a more naturalistic look than repeated stripes.

I also find that the differences in quality between Frosted Ultra and Frosted Extreme are fairly subtle and minimal with most objects. The new Shapeways pricing model reduces the price differential but it's still there, especially with larger objects.

It sucks. There's no perfect 3d printing process for details yet.

- nkg