HP 3D HR PA 12 User Manual

White paper

HP 3D HR PA 12 for the HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution

Dimensional Capability

White paper | HP 3D HR PA 12 for the HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution – Dimensional Capability

Introduction

At HP, we are committed to providing part designers and part manufacturers with the technical information and resources needed to enable them to unlock the full potential of 3D printing and prepare them for the future era of digital manufacturing.

The aim of this white paper is to provide you with information on the dimensional capabilities that can be achieved with the HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution with HP 3D High Reusability (HR)1 PA 12.

In this white paper, you will find:

•Tolerances in XY and Z for nominal dimensions ranging from 0 mm to 80 mm that can be achieved with the HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution, according to a process capability index,

•A detailed explanation of the test conditions under which these values were obtained, and

•Additional information on the concept of process capability and dimensional tolerancing, and a glossary of key terms used.

Dimensional profiles and HP 3D Process Control

The HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution has an in-printer feature that provides the capability to apply dimensional profiles. This feature helps streamline the workflow and provide an enhanced experience while helping to achieve manufacturing-level accuracy and repeatability.

The HP Jet Fusion 3D Printing process involves selectively melting plastic powder. Once melted, the material cools down until it solidifies, changing its internal structure. During solidification, the melted volume suffers from shrinkage. Dimensional profiles are used to compensate the variation of this effect along the printing volume, automatically applying geometrical transformations to each part being printed.

·Scaling

·3D morphology

·Part by part

z

y

x

Figure 1. Representation of conceptually geometrical transformations managed by HP 3D Process Control

1.HP Jet Fusion 3D Printing Solutions using HP 3D High Reusability PA 12 provide up to 80% powder reusability ratio, producing functional parts batch after batch. For testing, material is aged in real printing conditions and powder is tracked by generations (worst case for reusability). Parts are then made from each generation and tested for mechanical properties and accuracy.

White paper | HP 3D HR PA 12 for the HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution – Dimensional Capability

Geometrical transformations are applied independently in each axis, ensuring optimal results for every part orientation. For example, non-uniform scaling is used to compensate for shrinkage during the solidification process. In addition

to the volumetric compensations, dimensional profiles can act on the surface of the parts with axis-dependent 3D morphology.

By default, the HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution comes with general dimensional profiles. General profiles are a unique type of dimensional profile that optimize part geometry based on the average behavior of a wide-sample population of HP Jet Fusion 3D printers. Each print profile is associated to a general dimensional profile.

In addition, using HP 3D Process Control software, hardware-specific dimensional profiles can be generated and managed to achieve optimized dimensional capability and help deliver uniform results across a fleet of printers. These dimensional profiles can be used in use cases with very tight dimensional requirements, particularly when producing the same type of parts in a fleet of printers, as they can balance the dimensional particularities of each device.

The Profile Management feature in HP 3D Process Control allows you to select different profiles depending on the specific printing needs. For example:

•Triggerhardware-specificprofiling

•Viewalldimensionalprofilesbasedonprintercompatibility

•Configurethedimensionalprofilesinuseforeachprinter

General and hardware-specific dimensional profiles are generated by applying machine-learning techniques. HP uses the data collected from different designs to build mathematical models that will generate predictions to optimize the jobs when printing.

Figure 2 illustrates the geometries and jobs used to build the mathematical models.

Figure 2. Part geometries & job configurations used in the calibration of dimensional profiles

White paper | HP 3D HR PA 12 for the HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D Printing Solution – Dimensional Capability

Each of these parts has different critical dimensions that are measured in each print. For example, some of the critical dimensions collected for a specific part included in one of the jobs are shown in Figure 3.

		Name	Nominal/mm
	1	Height-1
			8
	2	Height-2	18
					1	2	3		4		5		6
	3	Height-3	30
	4	Height-4	45
	5	Height-5	60
	6	Height-6	80

Figure 3. Diagnostic part critical dimensions

To generate the general dimensional profile, the machine-learning model produces the correction based on the average of all the printers that provide data. For the hardware-specific dimensional profile, the data collected from the specific device are compared with the data from the overall population, and the correction is generated based on the average measurement from printers with a similar configuration.

Table 1 shows the statistics of the overall data used by the machine learning process to improve the profile generation.

Critical dimensions

Printers

Jobs printed

All data collected	For a specific print profile
~600,000
	~10,000
~60	~5
~300	10

Table 1. Data collected to generate profiles