Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman said her company claims to have solved the two biggest problems of today's 3D printers: their slow speed and patchy quality.

"It's like watching ice melt," she said about the slowness of current 3D printers.

The other is that 3D printing quality isn't as good as it should be.

"The surface of the substrate is not perfect," she said.

"We believe we have solved both these problems and we'll be making a big technology announcement in June around how we are going to approach this," Whitman said.

In June, HP is expected to show what it's working on and where it's heading. Whitman said HP's new 3D printers will target the business market first. That's because businesses have a demand for systems that can be used to print prototypes and finished products.

Despite being a leader in traditional printing, HP has not yet marketed a single 3D printer, an omission not unnoticed by financial analysts and the company's shareholders.

Several companies are already selling 3D printers, including 3D Systems and Stratasys. Research firm IDC said 3D printing has moved well beyond adopters and hobbyists and it expects the number of 3D printers sold this year to increase 67 percent from 2013.

3D printing, also called additive manufacturing, is a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process in which successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes. It is proving extremely popular and has found applications in many fields, including medicine and architecture.