HLH Rapid, headquartered in Leeds, UK, and Dongguan, China, provides on-demand manufacturing services with a focus on rapid prototyping and high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) production. The company consolidates a broad spectrum of manufacturing technologies under one roof, including CNC machining, rapid injection molding, vacuum casting, sheet metal prototyping, and a wide range of 3D printing processes. This integrated setup allows HLH to support a variety of industries with streamlined workflows and short lead times. In an interview with 3Druck.com, Co-founder James Murphy touches on how the falling cost of metal 3D printing is opening up new opportunities for its use in industry.
Additive manufacturing plays a central role in HLH’s operations. The company was an early adopter of stereolithography (SLA) and has steadily expanded its in-house capabilities to include over 150 3D printers. These cover multiple technologies such as SLA, Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Multi Jet Fusion (MJF), Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), Selective Laser Melting (SLM), and Multi Jet Printing (MJP). This infrastructure supports both prototyping and the production of end-use parts, including complex geometries in polymer and metal materials.
By continuously investing in its additive manufacturing setup, HLH is positioned to respond to increasing demand for low-to-mid-volume production runs. The company’s offering addresses technical requirements across industries such as aerospace, medical, automotive, and consumer products, with an emphasis on precision, repeatability, and material diversity.
Interview with James Murphy
In the interview with 3Druck.com, James Murphy, Co-Founder and CEO of HLH Rapid, discusses how HLH Rapid is adapting to the evolving role of additive manufacturing, particularly its shift from prototyping to low- and mid-volume production. He also highlights changes in client expectations and the impact of more accessible metal 3D printing technologies on expanding applications across different industries.
From a business perspective, how is additive manufacturing driving HLH’s growth and competitiveness within the UK’s advanced manufacturing landscape?
Additive manufacturing has long been a massive and growing part of HLH’s offering, and we continue to add new machines and technologies to our manufacturing portfolio. Over the past 3–5 years, 3D printing has moved from being purely a prototyping technology to one that is increasingly used for low-to-mid-volume production — and this has been a direction of travel HLH Rapid has been very much interested in promoting to our clients, as both the technologies and the materials have increased in scope and capabilities.
What key developments are currently shaping the industrial additive manufacturing sector, and how have your clients’ expectations or requirements evolved as a result?
HLH Rapid Co-founder and CEO James Murphy, Image: hlhrapid.com
The dropping cost of metal 3D printing is ensuring this technology becomes much more accessible. Not even three years ago, the prices for metal 3D-printed parts were incredibly high, and this meant the business case for using this technology needed to be very compelling, which limited the applications to some very high-margin industries like aerospace.
Over the past three years, due to a number of emerging industrial printer manufacturers and the increasing understanding of the capabilities, the price for metal AM has really started to come down — and that is only good news for innovation and application across many new industries for whom it was previously out of reach. We are seeing a massive increase in the types of industries and applications that are now using metal 3D printing as a tool for developing new products.
In what ways has your investment in a broad and flexible 3D printing infrastructure enabled you to diversify your services or expand into previously untapped industries?
We’ve been lucky as a service provider to always work with a wide range of different industries and clients from all over the world. We have been working with 3D printing since 2008, when SLA was the go-to — but also incredibly expensive and limited in terms of materials.
I remember we had one material we used for the first five or so years of working with SLA, and the projects we took on were one-off prototypes. Now we have seven different 3D printing technologies — Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Multi-Jet Fusion (MJF), Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), Selective Laser Melting (SLM), Multi-Jet Printing (MJP), and SLA — in-house. The material choices are massive and varied, and an increasing proportion of the work we are now doing involves production parts, not just prototypes — and this trend doesn’t look like it’s stopping.
Looking ahead over the next 5 to 10 years, what developments do you anticipate in additive manufacturing over the next five to ten years, particularly regarding materials and their potential applications?
Industries like medical and consumer products will increasingly rely on AM for manufacturing and mass customization. 3D printing can potentially dramatically reduce material waste and energy consumption — which is only going to become a bigger issue for the world. I think materials are where the most exciting development will come from, and the more 3D printing can do to replicate and better the properties of materials from traditional manufacturing processes, the more parts, components, and applications it can be used for.
Here you can find further information on 3D Printing services of HLH Rapid.
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