HP, Deloitte Aim To Establish Industrial-Scale 3D Printing

HP hopes its 3D-printing technology will help overhaul the global manufacturing sector in coming years under a newly announced agreement with Deloitte. The partnership, unveiled Thursday by the Silicon Valley tech stalwart and global consulting giant, aims to implement 3D printers that can effectively replace injection molding in large-scale industrial processes. 3D printing for decades helped companies develop new prototypes, but officials from HP and Deloitte suggested that recent advances in the technology would prompt manufacturers to embrace it for their production operations — perhaps in as little as five years' time. "What we have the opportunity here to do is disrupt a $12 trillion [global] manufacturing industry," HP President and CEO Dion Weisler said during a press conference at the company's Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters.