Electrowetting for drop-on-demand metal additive manufacturing
AssigneeUniversity of Connecticut
InventorsHorea Ilies, Jiangce Chen
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An apparatus for generating a droplet of a liquid metal material in a metal additive manufacturing process includes a nozzle configured to eject the droplet of the liquid metal material, the nozzle including a conductive solid. The apparatus also includes a voltage source configured to apply voltage between the conductive solid and the liquid metal material to modify a contact angle between an inner wall of the nozzle and the liquid metal material within the nozzle. The apparatus also includes a controller configured to modify the voltage from the voltage source to modify the contact angle and generate the droplet of the liquid metal material.
Claims13
A computer-based system for generating a droplet of a liquid metal material in a metal additive manufacturing process, the computer-based system comprising:
- an electronic controller configured to
- maintain the liquid metal material within a nozzle at a stable contact angle;
- and
- modify the contact angle between an inner wall of the nozzle and the liquid metal material within the nozzle to move the liquid metal material out of the nozzle and generate the droplet of liquid metal material,
- wherein the electronic controller is configured to increase the contact angle to decrease the wettability of the inner wall of the nozzle and release the droplet from the nozzle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.