Experimental Research of Pneumatic Drop-on-Demand High Temperature Droplet Deposition for Rapid Prototyping

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Abstract
Generating high-melting-point metals droplet is a bottleneck in the area of droplet-based rapid prototyping. In our research, a pneumatic drop-on-demand (DOD) generator was developed which can spray A2024 alloy successfully, and the maximum ejection temperature can reach to 1200°C. Experiments were conducted to examine the influence of the oxygen content on the metal droplet spray. The uniform A2024 droplet was ejected stably under the condition where the oxygen content was less than 25ppm. As the solenoid valve was opened once with different time span, four cases were observed: droplet stream, three droplets, two droplets and one single droplet. A2024 droplets were deposited continuously on top of each other in vertical direction to form vertical columns, which meant the graphite nozzle can be used in experiment. A simple square tube was produced by regulating the droplet generator, which showed the rapid prototyping by high-melting-point droplet deposition is feasible.

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