HP MJF Post-Processing: Surface Engineering for Prototyping Artists and Beyond.

Printed parts covered in unsintered PA12 powder before surface engineering treatment.

Most people in the Additive Manufacturing world are obsessed with what happens inside the printer and how to control it. Like modern sculptors they talk about nested parts, build speeds, and the latest PA12 powder refresh rates.

But here is the reality check: they are focused on printing, which is only 50% of the task. It is still a long way to say:

“Perchè non parli?” – “Why speakest thou not?”Michelangelo (1475 – 1564), Renaissance artist.

When you open your printer, you get a mass of plastic hidden in powder and can’t even understand if it is good to ship out or not; finishing these parts is the real key now.

The Industrial Reality of Additive Manufacturing.

In a professional environment, a part is not "manufactured" until its surface is cleaned, stabilized, and finished to meet nominal design parameter, no matter it is a prototype or a production batch.

You may “sculpture” 500 different parts today, all meeting different designs criteria and complicated shape, and so you might think of them as 500 different projects; still from the finishing point of view parts are to be depowered in the same way and with an acceptable roughness and decent looking.

Your business is prototyping; your finishing is often a “small” mass industrial process.

The OPEX Trap: From Laboratory to Production Line.

If you are still relying on manual de-powdering sandblasting stations, you aren't running a production line; you are running a laboratory. * The Margin Killer: While manual cleaning might work for a single prototype, it is the quickest way to burn margins when scaling to few hundreds of parts. It still not prohibited to finish those 15 prototypes for 15 different clients alltoghter in a single finish cycle on the same wheel blaster.

• The Quality Gap: Variability in manual finishing means variability in quality, leading to rejected batches and unpredictable costs.

The result of a controlled process: parts meet nominal design parameters with uniform roughness and a professional aesthetic, ready for your client.

While you chose your printing technology and devices, you focused on their operating costs (OPEX), spares and support availability; “what’s next” was a total question mark and probably you even didn’t think about.

Reality of Manual Sandblasting Stations: A small box with two gloves and a nozzle was looking practical, cheap, and extremely simple to handle, while today you have minimum one person spending his day there and paid by your money to get something can be done faster and cheaper by industrial automation.

Manual air nozzles are the most expensive way to burn your margins. In the next technical analysis, we will break down the physics of Air vs. Turbine efficiency."

Table of contents:

A) Defining the post processing problem and its impact. tihis post.

B) Economic impact of different finishing processes. here. 

C) Industrializing the finishing process. here.

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