Powder bed and inkjet head 3D printing
3D printing technology that creates objects by spraying a binder layer by layer onto a pile of powder
Binder jet 3D printing, known variously as "powder bed and inkjet" and "drop-on-powder" printing, is a rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing technology for making objects described by digital data such as a CAD file. Binder jetting is one of the seven categories of additive manufacturing processes according to ASTM and ISO.
History
This technology was first developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and patented in 1993. In 1996, the ExOne Company was granted an exclusive field-of-use patent for the technology, while Z Corporation, which was later acquired by 3D Systems, obtained a non-exclusive patent for use of the technology for metal casting purposes. The term "Three-Dimensional Printing" was trademarked by the research group at MIT, along with the abbreviation 3DP. As a result, the term "3D printing" originally referred uniquely to the binder jet printing process prior to gaining wider acceptance as a term referring to all additive manufacturing processes.
Description
As in many other additive manufacturing processes the part to be printed is built up from many thin cross sections of the 3D model. An inkjet print head moves across a bed of powder, selectively depositing a liquid binding material. A thin layer of powder is spread across the completed section and the process is repeated with each layer adhering to the last.
When the model is complete, unbound powder is automatically and/or manually removed in a process called "de-powdering" and may be reused to some extent.
The de-powdered part could optionally be subjected to various infiltrants or other treatments to produce properties desired in the final part.
Materials
In the original implementations, starch and gypsum plaster fill the powder bed, the liquid "binder" being mostly water to activate the plaster.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Powder bed and inkjet head 3D printing” is 3D printing technology that creates objects by spraying a binder layer by layer onto a pile of powder. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Powder, inkjet and head, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25381710. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1993 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Powder bed and inkjet head 3D printing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.