Study on stable delivery of charged uniform droplets for freeform fabrication of metal parts

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.

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