Abstract
On-demand metal droplet deposition will be a cornerstone technology in 3D metal printing. However, suitable small nozzles are hardly available, limiting the resolution and surface finish of final products. Here, the ejection of record-small metal droplets with a diameter of only 0.55±0.07 times the nozzle diameter was demonstrated. To this end, a novel metal drop-on-demand (DoD) generator for high-temperature metal processing was designed and manufactured. A metal rod was utilized to transfer a vibration pulse, which was required to eject a liquid droplet, from a low-temperature region to the high-temperature liquid metal close to the nozzle. The influence of the pulse characteristics on the droplet ejection regime was studied experimentally and numerically. A 2D axisymmetric numerical model revealed that the shorter pulses allow reducing the droplet size, with the pulse duration of 13 μs resulting in the smallest feasible droplets. A novel method to create such short pulses, by impacting the metal-ring connected rod with a solid impactor was manufactured and tested, and the benefits of this method over more the spring-type pulse transfer was experimentally confirmed. This research provides a feasible way to achieve ejection of the small metal droplet on-demand
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 67-74 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | International journal of machine tools & manufacture |
| Volume | 106 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Keywords
- IR-100774
- METIS-317333
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Luo, J., Qi, L., Tao, Y., Ma, Q., & Visser, C. W. (2016). Impact-driven ejection of micro metal droplets on-demand. International journal of machine tools & manufacture, 106, 67-74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmachtools.2016.04.002