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When designers and manufacturers share their 3D printing needs, they often ask, “Aren’t Binder Jetting 3D printing, Material Jetting, and Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) the same? What’s the difference? And what about Metal Jet ?”
Although it’s true that the Binder Jetting, Material Jetting, MJF, and Metal Jet processes may seem the same—all names include the concept of "jetting"—they’re actually very different.
This article explains the key differences between the processes.
What is Binder Jetting?
Binder Jetting 3D printing, or Binder Jetting additive manufacturing, uses a powder-based material—for example, polymers, metals, ceramics, or glass—and a liquid binder. The liquid binder acts as an adhesive between layers.
With the Binder Jetting process, a print head moves horizontally along the X and Y axes of the 3D printer, depositing powder and binding material in alternate layers. After each layer, the build platform lowers the object being printed by the same thickness as the layer.
As with many of the other powder-based printing methods, support structures are not needed because the 3D printed object is supported in the powder bed. It then just needs to be removed or unpacked from the unused powder once the 3D printing process ends.
The benefits of Binder Jetting
Binder Jetting is commonly used for making aesthetic and color prototypes, sand casting cores and molds, tooling, jewelry, dental and medical devices, and aerospace components.
As well as generally being a fast process, the benefits of Binder Jetting include the fact that parts can be made with a range of different colors (in the case of plastics) and in a wide range of materials. The two-material method also allows different binder-powder combinations.
Is HP Metal Jet the same as Binder Jetting?
HP Metal Jet technology is a relatively new metal binder jetting process. It does not require support structures. HP Thermal Inkjet nozzles are used to precisely deliver HP Binding Agent to a powder metal bed using industry-standard metal powders (stainless steel).
This technology can produce multiple metal parts at the same time with isotropic properties and density similar to MIM.
What is Material Jetting?
Material Jetting is commonly used for aesthetic and color prototypes, anatomical models for educational purposes and pre-surgical planning and training, art, and jewelry.
In Material Jetting, the chosen material, which may be plastics, polymers, or metals, is applied in droplets through a small diameter nozzle, similar to a 2D inkjet paper printer.
Material is jetted onto a build platform using either a continuous or Drop on Demand (DOD) approach. It is applied layer-by-layer to a build platform and then hardened by UV light. Material Jetting also requires support for the part, which is printed simultaneously during building from a dissolvable material removed afterward.
NanoParticle Jetting (NPJ), which is trademarked, is also included in this category. NJP is a form of Material Jetting that builds up parts using suspensions of powdered material. Using NJP allows for the use of less bonding agent in a 3D printed part.
Because with NJP and DOD the material is deposited in drops, your choice of materials is limited. Typically, polymers and waxes are used, but in some cases, you can also work with metals.
The benefits of Material Jetting
Material Jetting is highly accurate when it comes to the deposition of droplets. This results in lower levels of waste and has a positive impact on the cost of printing. It also enables you to use multiple parts and colors in a single process, resulting in greater efficiency and time and cost savings.
In terms of the limitations of Material Jetting, support material is required, and you may have an issue with brittle parts. Due to material limitations, Material Jetting is ideal for prototyping but less suited to producing functional, end-use parts that require good mechanical properties.
What is Multi Jet Fusion (MJF)?
MJF is a relatively new industrial 3D printing process that can be described as a combination of Powder Bed Fusion and Binder Jetting technologies.
MJF is commonly used for final functional parts as well as prototypes, including industrial applications. For example, you can use it for End-of-Arm-Tooling (EOAT), robotics, machinery, equipment, and production line components. It’s also used for tooling, jigs and fixtures, medical devices, dental aligner molds, orthotics and prosthetics, automotive components, wire harnessing, and fluid systems.
With HP MJF, a layer of powder material is spread on the print bed. Next, the fusing and detailing agents are deposited at voxel-level on top of the powder, defining the regions of the layer that need to be fused or protected from fusion, respectively. A voxel is the 3D printing equivalent of a pixel.
Heat is applied to the bed and the areas where the fusing agent was deposited are fused.
Once these fused layers cool down, they solidify and build the designed 3D printed part.
The benefits of MJF
MJF offers high productivity and throughput as well as industry-leading materials reusability for product development teams and manufacturers.
It also delivers best-in-class isotropy and functional, quality end-use parts. In materials, isotropy defines the uniformity of its properties, whatever the direction in which they’re measured.
MJF vs. Binder Jetting
MJF and Binder Jetting both deposit powder layer by layer onto a print bed and jet agents onto the powder layer. Because of this similarity, they’re often regarded as the same thing.
This is not true. There’s an important difference between MJF and Binder Jetting that impacts the part quality and mechanical properties.
With Binder Jetting, a single binding agent, essentially an adhesive or glue, is jetted onto the material to bind the layers of powder together.
MJF uses two agents. These are a fusing agent to define where the material will be fused and a detailing agent, which precisely denotes the edges of the 3D printed part. Together, they finish the fusing.
Multi Jet Fusion, as the name suggests, actually fuses the material. The polymer chains within the material entangle to fuse rather than bind or glue the layers. Polymer chain entanglement results in quality, functional parts that look and act like final parts with, as we’ve mentioned, best-in-class isotropy.
MJF vs. SLS and FDM
MJF is similar to SLS in that it thermally fuses or sinters polymer powder particles layer by layer. Like SLS, it uses thermoplastic polymers that are usually nylon.
MJF is like SLS as both are Powder Bed Fusion processes that use nylon material powder. The difference is that SLS uses a laser to sinter the powder material while MJF uses an inkjet array to jet fusing and detailing agents precisely onto the powder bed, before applying heat using fusing lamps.
Unlike SLS or Fused Deposition Modelling, which uses a point-by-point printing approach, HP MJF technology can print a complete layer at the same time using proprietary HP PageWide printing technology, enabling breakthrough productivity and throughput.
Because the 3D printed part rests on the powder that surrounds it, neither MJF nor SLS require supports — unlike FDM.
Using MJF results in a fast, reliable process and 3D printed parts with consistent mechanical properties. Contact an Additive Manufacturing expert to discover more about how HP 3D Printing technologies can help unlock new opportunities for your business.
Learn how other additive manufacturing processes work in our "3D printing and additive manufacturing processes" article.
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Footnotes and disclaimers
- Data courtesy of Campetella Robotic Center