In order to study the successive deposition and solidification processes of uniform alloy droplets during the drop-on-demand three dimensional（3D） printing method,based on the volume of fluid（VOF） method,a 3D numerical model was employed.In this model,the 7075 alloy with larger temperature range for phase change was used.The simulation results show that the successive deposition and solidification processes of uniform 7075 alloy droplets can be well characterized by this model.Simulated droplets shapes agree well with SEM images under the same condition.The effects of deposition and solidification of droplets result in vertical and L-shaped ridges on the surface of droplets,and tips of dendrites appear near the overlap of droplets due to rapid solidification.
基于改进的水平集法(Level Set Method)建立了金属液滴按需喷射过程的有限元模型,研究了气体脉冲作用下金属液滴的喷出过程,考察了脉冲宽度及脉冲压力对液滴初始速度及尺寸的影响。结果表明:水平集方法可以有效追踪按需喷射铝液滴和保护气体间的自由界面;液滴直径随脉冲宽度呈线性增加,但液滴初始速度变化不大;随着脉冲压力的升高,液滴初始速度显著增加,但液滴直径变化不大。
Ultrasonic vibration feeding（UVF） method which can quantitatively feed and precisely deposit fine powder is a potential technique for micro feeding.The excitation sources transmit vibration to capillary though the third medium for most UVF devices.The vibrator is directly touched with the capillary can transmit mechanical energy on the capillary as much as possible,and the powder feeding can be controlled more precise.However,there are few reports about it.A direct UVF system which integrates the function of micro feeding,process observing,and powder forming was developed in this work.In order to analyze the effect of the system factors on feeding,a group of L9（3^3） orthogonal experiments are selected to confirm the effect of level change of factors.The three factors are capillary nozzle diameter,amplitude and signal.The flow rate was stable for each combined factors,and the optimum combination for the minimum flow rate are choosing small capillary,small amplitude,and triangular wave orderly.The whole process of feeding includes start point,middle stage and stop stage.Starting of feeding was synchronized to vibration when the amplitude of capillary nozzle is larger than critical amplitude.Then,the feeding process enters the middle stage,the feeding state is observed by the CCD,and it is very stable in the middle stage.Overflow of feeding can＇t be eliminated during the stop stage.The features of the deposited powder lines are analyzed; the overflow can be diminished by choosing small capillary and appropriate ratio of the capillary nozzle diameter to the particle size.Chinese characters lattices were deposited to validate the ability of quantitatively feeding and fixed feeding of UVF.Diameters of all powder dots show normal distribution,and more than 60% dots are concentrated from 550 μm to 650 μm,and the average diameter for all the dots is 597 μm.Most dots positions are well approached to their scheduled positions,and the maximum deviation is 0.27 mm.The new direct UVF system is used to implement ex
Electrostatic delivery of charged uniform metal droplets is a novel method to deposit metal parts with short process period and low cost. But the delivery process is unstable and delivery accuracy of charged droplets deteriorates because of actions of mutual interactions of closely charged droplets. A droplet generator with droplet charging and deflecting system has been established to find out the way for stably and accurately deflecting droplets. The parameters for generating uniform droplets were first studied. Then the droplet deflections and metal parts depositions with different charge methods were discussed. The results show that the unbalanced electrostatic repelling forces are the main factor to cause the unstable deflection of droplets. The droplets deflection distance can be predicted and controlled by balancing the repelling forces of charged droplets. The metal parts are stably deposited after combining the board charged pulse and substrate motion, indicating that the work can provide useful theoretical and experimental guide for droplet-based freeform fabrication.
