高速烧结（HSS）是最终使用3D打印生产20年的方法。尼尔·霍普金森（Neil Hopkinson）教授发明并申请了该技术Loughborough Universityand, working with Xaar, chose to make the move toward commercialization in 2005.
Recently, at the company’s 3D Technology Day in Nottingham, Neil who is now the Director of 3D Printing at Xaar led a personal tour of the company’s additive manufacturing development and demonstration facility.
Here I was treated to a preview of Xaar’s forthcoming HSS 3D printer, project named ‘Little Blue’, heading to select partners at the end of 2018.
A combination of SLA and injection molding
HSS 3D printing was an idea hatched by Neil studying for his PhD. The project, funded by 3D Systems, looked at the viability of SLA 3D printed molds for use in injection molding. As a matter of course, Neil gradually identified the scope for combining the two processes, cutting out the mold-making middle man, and ramping up rapid prototyping an end-use process.
HSS开发核心的技术是激光烧结。类比尼尔给出了使用激光对烧结粉末使用的过程“几乎就像在墙壁上使用比罗彩色。这不是这样做的有效途径。”他补充说，
“我们如何找到一种更有效，时间和成本效益的方法，将激光烧结中的粉末转化为零件。这就是答案 - 取出激光。”
The carbon black test
HSS过程中的打印头将红外吸收墨水放在粉末床上。辐照床时，墨水会吸收红外灯的能量并融化下面的颗粒。
尼尔在解释了这一过程的综合时说：“我得到了一些激光烧结粉末，其中两个小块与碳黑色混合在一起，一个不是。我用灯加热了它们。那个（带有碳黑）确实做到了，而那个（没有）没有，我想 - 这将起作用。”
为了意识到他的想法，尼尔需要一个喷墨打印头，可以承受融合聚合物粉末所需的高温。在与许多打印头生产商进行了讨论之后，正是Xaar通过试用其打印头所需的支持，并最初对冷却过度进行过度补偿，并且实际上“炸”了头部。
Inside Little Blue
Xaar’s own “Little Blue” HSS 3D printer is at the alpha stage of development. The current build volume is about the size of a typical house brick. As a demo 10 palm-sized (each approximately 4 in long, 1.5 inches wide and 0.5 inches deep) articulated fish bones were 3D printed.
For a job of this scale and complexity, it takes Little Blue about 2 hours to complete the print.
Plenty more fish still to come
In order to retain this performance, the build chamber is subject to precise thermal stability across the entire build plate, which is the main challenge to scaling up the HSS process.
With development, HSS is intended to be faster than the competition. Speed, and the scale of the system is one of the key R&D goals of Xaar’ssister team in Copenhagen.
“With our Copenhagen team, it’s pretty obvious that we’ve taken them on to build equipment,” explains Neil. “We can’t give specific details of that equipment, in terms of the bed sizes and so-on, but as an industrial system it will be a bigger bed size than this, and it will run quicker.” In a figure of speech adds,
“So that will enable us to build a far greater number of fishes, in a smaller amount of time.”
More inkjet 3D printers the world over
As a technology with strong 2D foundations, many people in the industry believe that inkjet technology will be the future of 3D printing. Keen to make the most of this opportunity, in a second business segment Xaar is also directing its efforts to supply inkjet 3D printheads to international OEMS.
此外，Xaar一直在与包括巴斯夫在内的材料制造商和其他有关方面合作，以测试其组件的功能。
XAAR的2018年3D印刷行业奖提名的高层化技术（HLT）是快速且可扩展的增材制造过程的“心脏”中的一个过程。雷电竞充值HLT也将在XAAR HSS系统中应用于粘性液体的高吞吐量，以获取高强度零件并扩展其材料组合。
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Featured image shows Neil Hopkinson, Director of 3D Printing at Xaar, holds a couple manifold part 3D printed using HSS. Photo by Beau Jackson
