The company have recently been under fire for their blocking third-party cartridges.
The Register reported that while HP Inc is under fire over its DRM lockdown of third-party cartridges for machines including the OfficeJet Pro 6820 and 6830, in the 3D printing business the company wants to address that it won’t be excluding all third party consumables.
While he was speaking at the 50th anniversary party for HP Labs, Tim Weber, global head of 3D materials for the firm said that the company is not going to be the only manufacturer of materials for the consumables used by their 3D printers. Four other companies, including BASF, are currently developing products for their 3D Printers he stated that “these will be open suppliers”.
HP will still be able to prohibit certain suppliers from selling materials for the 3D printers if it cannot certify them (with quality and user safety in mind), and Weber then went on to say “they will set the branding and the price once they have been certified”. HP Inc’s first 3D printer will only use a single type of material – the plastic PA12 – with more materials coming online from other companies within the next two years.
By the end of 2016, HP Inc’s first commercial 3D printer, the ‘Jet Fusion 3D 3200’, will go on sale at the price of $120,000 (£92,364/€106,908), while this is considerably expensive, Weber noted that the first laser printer cost $15,000 (£11,545/€13,363). The next printer will begin to add colour, specifically cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, which instantly opens up over 65,000 possible printing colours.