Liquid Phase 3D Printing for Quickly Manufacturing Metal Objects with Low Melting Point Alloy Ink

TL;DR

This paper introduces a rapid liquid phase 3D printing method using low melting point alloys, significantly enhancing speed and oxidation resistance compared to traditional air-cooled metal 3D printing.

Contribution

It presents a novel liquid phase 3D printing technique with detailed analysis of physical factors affecting quality and proposes a future printer design integrating syringe pumps and needle arrays.

Findings

Higher cooling rate improves printing speed.

Prevents air oxidation of liquid metal inks.

Potential for rapid metal object fabrication.

Abstract

Conventional 3D printings are generally time-consuming and printable metal inks are rather limited. From an alternative way, we proposed a liquid phase 3D printing for quickly making metal objects. Through introducing metal alloys whose melting point is slightly above room temperature as printing inks, several representative structures spanning from one, two and three dimension to more complex patterns were demonstrated to be quickly fabricated. Compared with the air cooling in a conventional 3D printing, the liquid-phase-manufacturing offers a much higher cooling rate and thus significantly improves the speed in fabricating metal objects. This unique strategy also efficiently prevents the liquid metal inks from air oxidation which is hard to avoid otherwise in an ordinary 3D printing. Several key physical factors (like properties of the cooling fluid, injection speed and needle diameter, types and properties of the printing ink, etc.) were disclosed which would evidently affect the printing quality. In addition, a basic route to make future liquid phase 3D printer incorporated with both syringe pump and needle arrays was also suggested. The liquid phase 3D printing method, which owns potential values not available in a conventional modality, opens an efficient way for quickly making metal objects in the coming time.