Process-level modeling and simulation for HP's Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing technology

The 3D printing technology is expected to revolutionize part manufacturing by enabling rapid and inexpensive production at a small scale. HP's Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing technology is developed to provide new levels of part quality in a fast and inexpensive way compared to existing 3D printing technologies. The printed part quality is determined by the interplay of the printing device and materials used for printing. Thus, it is essential to have a proper cyber-physical system model for the printing system for process-level simulation of the HP's Multi Jet Fusion technology. In this paper, we propose an approach for the process-level modeling and simulation of HP's Multi Jet Fusion technology. Our approach can be used to carry out simulation of the 3D printing system, to provide guidance for optimization and development of the printing process and exploration of materials. Preliminary results potentially indicate that the simulation of our proposed model is significantly faster than the finite element method, which is a widely used technique for 3D printing simulation.