TY - JOUR

T1 - Active-mixing printhead for on-the-fly composition adjustment of multi component materials in Direct Ink Writing

AU - Teves, Simon

AU - Biermann, Tobias

AU - Ziebehl, Arved

AU - Eckert, Gerrit

AU - Hill, Björn Ole

AU - Xia, Panpan

AU - Wollweber, Merve

AU - Ripken, Tammo

AU - Bigall, Nadja-Carola

AU - Lachmayer, Roland Johann

N1 - This research is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy within the Cluster of Excellence PhoenixD (EXC 2122, Project ID 390833453) and by the Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony (MWK) - School for Additive Manufacturing SAM .

PY - 2024/7

Y1 - 2024/7

N2 - Multi-Material Additive Manufacturing (MMAM) enables the grading of material properties and the integration of functions within printed parts. While most MMAM methods are limited to process single-component or pre-mixed multi-component materials, the in-process mixing and extrusion of multi-component materials enables innovative material properties and use cases. When processing liquid multi-component materials, the individual component streams need to be homogenized in-process, but the required volume in conventional passive mixing hinders rapid transitions in material composition. In this paper, a two component printhead is presented which combines an active mixing approach with a continuous composition adjustment for a third additive. The approach to control the mixing composition is to influence the hydrodynamic equilibrium of individual material streams before merging them near the point of extrusion. The printhead's functionality is verified in terms of mixing homogeneity and transition speed between material compositions.

AB - Multi-Material Additive Manufacturing (MMAM) enables the grading of material properties and the integration of functions within printed parts. While most MMAM methods are limited to process single-component or pre-mixed multi-component materials, the in-process mixing and extrusion of multi-component materials enables innovative material properties and use cases. When processing liquid multi-component materials, the individual component streams need to be homogenized in-process, but the required volume in conventional passive mixing hinders rapid transitions in material composition. In this paper, a two component printhead is presented which combines an active mixing approach with a continuous composition adjustment for a third additive. The approach to control the mixing composition is to influence the hydrodynamic equilibrium of individual material streams before merging them near the point of extrusion. The printhead's functionality is verified in terms of mixing homogeneity and transition speed between material compositions.

KW - Multi-material additive manufacturing

KW - Active mixing

KW - Direct ink writing

KW - Multi-component materials

KW - Rapid-transition printing

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85192187253&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.addlet.2024.100217

DO - 10.1016/j.addlet.2024.100217

M3 - Article

VL - 10

JO - Additive Manufacturing Letters

JF - Additive Manufacturing Letters

M1 - 100217

ER -