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What really inspired additive manufacturing?
3D printing or CAD designers.

Can you imagine making anything on a tool? Look into

Home At Additive Alliance we aim to provide highly versatile cost effective computer controlled  machines capable of fabricating a mind bending variety of components.

Howtek, Inc was R.H Research before changing its name. Howtek was a publicly traded firm. Howtek was started to design a revolutonary new color printer. Howtek. Remember that name. The round white materials in the bag were from Ballistic Particle Manufacturing (BPM). BPM patented 3D printing on 7/2/1984 but had to wait for Howtek to design the inkjet before formally starting its 3D printer business in 1994.

These black filter handles were molded in a chemically inert material. But 100% of the handles needed to be recalled or reworked because the hole was 95% blocked during the molding process. Drill out the vertical internal hole to open up the fluid path. The printer will then work at normal 120C temperatures on the heated line.

Which Additive Manufacturing Process began with 3D printed Pixels and 3D printed graphics? Hint: Look at this picture with layered hot-melt thermoplastic drops Patented by Howtek.

Single-nozzle jet Fluid
If you touch the fluid surface at the nozzle hole, the fluid surface film breaks and the fluid falls or drains back into the fluid supply.
Removing fluid from a single-nozzle inkjet is as simple as touching the tip of the nozzle. Removing fluid occurs because the fluid reservoir is below the nozzle hole height.

A fluid empty nozzle is like an empty glass of wine or milk. It empty.

Filling a single-nozzle jet requires work. The fluid must be moved from the tank back to the nozzle. The fluid is in a tank. The fluid must be pushed up through a filter. It takes time to move fluid to a nozzle. The tank is pressurized only to push fluid to the nozzle. The tank fluid will slowly flow uphill to the single-nozzle until it fills the nozzle and drips out. This action is called priming. People prime pumps. People prime the automobile engine to move gas to the fuel injectors. Priming is a normal fluid system activity.
After priming the tank pressure is removed. The fluid is again free to fall back to the tank if you touch the fluid surface at the nozzle hole.
Now you know everything about single-nozzles fluids. But no one knows how to make a nozzle shoot only one drop out of that nozzle hole without any fluid flow. There is no fluid flow in a simple single-nozzle but it will give away a drop if you tell it to do this. This is true. Are you curious?

3D printing was no accident. It was an awareness. A 'Wow' moment. Should we consider it innovative. It's like when a baby stands and walks.

First they asked "why" 3D printing and today we ask "How" to use 3D printing. It was not as easy as it looked. Finding the machine for the right materials is the challenge.

3D Printing's Journey to a New Industrial Reality - 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing In the world of 3D printing, we stand to witness a revolution unfold before our eyes. As the saying goes, “There’s a time and place for everything,” and for 3D...

There exists a massive number of 3D printers in my inventory that are looking for curious owners. In the 1940's this would be a gold mine of opportunity. In the 1950's seekers of fortune would at my home looking for rags, tools, etc to convert into cash. In the 1960's and 1970's recyclers would roam the streets. In the 1980's the value of gold rising made everything valuable. From the 1990's till now, people just want to grab and run.
What do people need in the 2020's to be inspired? I am looking for ideas here people!

My business is moaning and groaning.
It is looking for a new owner.

I miss the days of rapid prototyping. The enthusiasm and anticipation in every model was invigorating. Viewing the printer operating was mesmerizing. All of this disappeared as prices climbed out of reach. I keep waiting for a simple process that everyone can afford.
Look at office printer prices for full color high resolution images. All that is needed is a Z table added to these printers.

RIP 3D Printing: The Cart Before the Horse - 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing I’m grateful for the extensive feedback and thoughtful discussion that emerged from my earlier article, “RIP 3D Printing: 1987 – 2023, Complexity is Expensive.” The strong response has prompted me...

Do any AM 3D printing processes deposit an entire Layer in one digital instruction from a Computer data file? In other words, is data sent to a machine as one full layer of a model with the complete deposition being done in one step?

Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM)
Materials? Any
Process? Any direct application technology
1. FFF - filaments.
a. Any heated material than flows from a nozzle.
This can also be drops of liquid that form from melted wires, soft plastic or any hotmelt clean or mixed with carbon fibers or any nanoparticles. Yes even inkjet drops ejected from a nozzle overlap and form a continuous bead of material on a substrate. People don't realize that material jetting is actually fused deposition. The AM industry has some serious errors of understanding about how these AM processes really work. It is time to educate readers about AM process realities.

Doesn't the term Additive Manufacturing sound ridiculous. Layered Manufacturring makes more sense to me. Manufacturing by designing in layers requires fabricating in layers. Stopping a layered manufacturing process at any point will show a partial incomplete layer in the object.

Remember first grade.
You learned how to print letters with short lined strokes.
Script writing was a continum of writing the whole word without lifting the pen.
3D Printing is not printing at all. 3D layers are continums of material with no voids.
3D Layers are actually uniform coatings of material. Layers make up object internal cross sections. AM processes may be less complicated than they seem. Material jetting is actually drops overlapping to make a filament much like FDM does with less melted material.
Binder jetting is a two step process (powder and a binder fluid) to form a layer. SLA is a two step process of a fluid and light to gel a layer.
SLS is a two step process with fluid and heat.
AM is a material layering process that requires a design assembled in cross-sections of an object. In all cases the layers must be uniformly formed and be consistent in density with no voids. Each layer must fuse with the next layer to form an object.
It is definitively not printing. It is layered manufacturing. No need to use the words additive anymore.

Quoted from Wikipedia
Layer-by-layer (LbL) deposition is a thin film fabrication technique. The films are formed by depositing alternating layers of oppositely charged materials with wash steps in between. This can be accomplished by using various techniques such as immersion, spin, spray, electromagnetism, or fluidics.[1]

Development
Edit
The first implementation of this technique is attributed to J. J. Kirkland and R. K. Iler of DuPont, who carried it out using microparticles in 1966.[2] The method was later revitalized by the discovery of its applicability to a wide range of polyelectrolytes by Gero Decher at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.[3]

Most, if not all, people have no idea how AM material jetting works. Fluid drops "must" overlap on contact to a surface to make a layer. Overlapped drops were printed when inkjet graphics became involved in printing Fonts. A text Font is a specific shape character and it required positioning drops to form each letter. Dot Matrix printing is different. Dot Matrix printing only placed drops in patterns to appear like a letter. It is safe to say 3D printing of text began after Dot Matrix printing ended. Overlapping dots is 3D text printing. The father of overlapping text printing is Thomas Peer. He worked at Exxon Office Systems and Howtek. Inc. His work with dot placement machine control language brought about the 3D printing era. Drop on Demand Inkjet printing forced the printing industry into 3D printing. Drops in flight were positioned on a surface by controlling the printhead's speed in linear motion along a print path. Each drop has to be precisely placed to insure Font shape was repeatable or a color hue was correct. CMYK drops printed on a surface must be placed precisely to give the same color. The company responsible for the first inkjet drop on demand color printer was Howtek. It's Themoplastic CMYK hotmelt inks printed raised drops on a surface and were 3D printing. This ink and printing process was done at Howtek in 1984. The Ht-1 color printer was introduced at Comdex Atlanta, GA in Nov 1984. It was later named the Pixelmaster.

In 1972 I found a book about the engineering of musical instruments. Resonant organ pipes. In 1978 I was testing a Steve Zoltan style inkjet made by a glass blower at Exxon Office Systems. Steve was involved with the construction process. The Physics JET test lab delivered it to me. It was connected to a drive pulse circuit to print text on paper. A tool maker, Mike Sheehan was to mount it on this old 'spark' facsimile printer. I was a newly hired electrical mechanical technician to solder the wires and press the test button. The single nozzle inkjet printed a few sentences and we stopped the test when some words printed with Bold font. I thought it was cool. Everyone else was in shock. I did some testing and found that at higher voltage output could do the same thing. Bold print was just bigger drops. I proposed it was jetting in resonance mode. No one commented. I was too new to be telling the scientists what I thought. And this is how I got involved with inkjet. Within a few months I was applying for one of the first patents for Exxon Office Systems. It had to with fluid resonances. Steve and I became fishing friends but we never talked about inkjets. I thought that was very odd. I made imrovements to his inkjet over the years but never patented those improvements. I believe the 3D inkjets used today still represent the Steve Zoltan design. These jets are Drop On Demand single nozzle resonance fluid ejectors of hot melt materials.
The material made the jets 3D dispensers. The jets are just jets. That is why the AM process is called material jetting. 3D printing is all about the material. Remember that!

A Single glass tube with a jewel nozzle or heat formed tapered nozzle, piezo squeezed fluid chamber was patented by Steve Zoltan in '73.
This jet fluid chamber squeezed out one drop per squeeze. In '78 it was discovered to squeeze out bigger drops at higher harmonic frequencies of the glass tube. In '79 it was discovered to ingest fluid (act like a pump) by reducing the nozzle or***ce surface tension to zero. (McMahon patent). No newer patents have been issued for single nozzle inkjets because of these complications. In '84 the single nozzle inkjet was used with a soft tube material at Howtek to control the nozzle meniscus vibration. This stable meniscus allowed the single nozzle inkjet to operate a 10X the original Zoltan operating frequency and at 10X the original operating temperature. This inspired others to use this inkjet with hotmelt inks found in todays 3D printers. These events are not known or understood by most Additive Manufacturing readers.

I am the only person still talking about graghic design going 3D with early automated fabrication tools. XY plotters moved toward inkjet using demand piezo when pens were drying up. The 60's continuous inkjet large format printers proved the technology was viable. Bubble jet (Thermal water-based ink) delayed the 3D introduction. A Hotmelt metal patent in 1971 was premature to this local production concept. New Hampshire auto parts manufacturers discovered CAD designed wax models could be investment cast in the the late 1980's. Sanders Prototype, Inc (XY pen plotters) with the help from Howtek, Inc inkjets and liquid plastic inks opened the door for 3D functional Rapid Prototype models using Richard Helinski's 1989 patent.

Who remembers the T76+?
Who remembers the T612?
Who remembers the 6 Pro?
The RTM, the 20/20 or Big Foot?
Gamma Jets
Who remembers Sanders Prototype Inc.?

A US patent of 3D Printing using Drop on demand inkjet technology could teach the AM industry so much. Liquid deposition with hotmelt plastics or waxes is directly related to direct printing using liquid metal. We need to get away from binder jetting and laser melting of powders. Inkjet is overlooked by everyone. I see reports on AM processes and it is not always listed. Read patent US5506607A. Understand it. Yes, these hotmelt DOD inkjets were developed in 1984 and are still being used in 3D printers today. Oh, liquid metal inkjets were introduced by patent in 1969 with continuous flow molten metals printing on a conveyor belt. A real eye opener, for those with vision.