Investigation of some phenomena occurring during continuous ink-jet printing of ceramics
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A ceramic ink was prepared, characterised, and subjected to continuous ink-jet printing. The optimum modulation frequency for printing was estimated. The surface free energies of several substrates were determined and different patterns of the ink droplets were printed on these. Phenomena occurring during the process were investigated. The drop-by-drop resolution and ink spreading were found to be dependent on the dispersive/total surface free energy ratio of the substrates. Ink drying was accompanied by powder migration in the droplets deposited on substrates with a surface free energy lower than the surface tension of the ink. Printing of multiple layers was accompanied by the appearance of ridges, splattering, and non-vertical walls. The causes of these phenomena are discussed in this paper.
I. INTRODUCTION
Ink-jet printing is used in several production technologies such as textiles,1 paper,2 micro-engineering,3,4 electronics, 5 and biomaterials. 6 In recent years, direct ceramic ink-jet printing has been used for the solid freeform fabrication of engineering ceramics.7 Evans, Edirisinghe, and co-workers pioneered direct ceramic ink-jet printing using both continuous and drop-on-demand printers8,9 and this process has several advantages7 over the process of printing binder onto roll-compacted layers of ceramic powder.10 This is mainly because direct ceramic ink-jet printing is based on well dispersed suspensions of fine powders and is capable of layer thicknesses
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