TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact-driven ejection of micro metal droplets on-demand
AU - Luo, Jun
AU - Qi, Lehua
AU - Tao, Yuan
AU - Ma, Qian
AU - Visser, C.W.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - 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
AB - 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
KW - IR-100774
KW - METIS-317333
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijmachtools.2016.04.002
DO - 10.1016/j.ijmachtools.2016.04.002
M3 - Article
VL - 106
SP - 67
EP - 74
JO - International journal of machine tools & manufacture
JF - International journal of machine tools & manufacture
SN - 0890-6955
ER -