HP announces strengthening of alliance with Siemens

Amidst a flurry of announcements, HP have revealed an expansion of their alliance with Siemens.

The alliance hopes to take advantage of Siemen’s expertise in automation and HP’s industrial 3D printing background. HP’s press release said that the two are collaborating in order to “help auto and industrial customers create high-quality 3D printed parts faster; enabling unique product designs, new applications, and digital factories.“

The alliance “will expand their integrated additive manufacturing solution, incorporating new systems and software innovations including overall product lifecycle management (PLM), AM factory optimization, industrial 3D printing and data intelligence, manufacturing execution, and performance analytics.”

A concrete example of their collaboration comes as HP also announces its new Jet Fusion 5200 series 3D printing platform, which comes integrated with Siemens software. HP says it will deliver “improved economics, performance, and part quality,” and will thus be aimed at enabling the high volume manufacture of plastic parts.

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Christoph Schell, President of 3D Printing and Digital Manufacturing at HP used the press release to link the developments with HP’s wider goals: “The broadening of our portfolio with the new Jet Fusion 5200 Series 3D printing system, coupled with expanded industrial alliances and our new Digital Manufacturing network, are important accelerators of our digital manufacturing journey.”

On Siemens side, Klaus Helmrich, CEO of Siemens Digital Industries, said that they are “bringing together the best from both companies in a complete, industry-specific solution that will accelerate the adoption of industrial additive manufacturing and help our customers to increase flexibility, efficiency, and speed of digital manufacturing.” The alliance, then, is another important step towards ensuring additive manufacturing can compete on industrial scales with existing techniques such as injection moulding.