Orme 9622400 As an emerging technology, rapid prototyping is revolutionizing every sector of industry, creating great opportunities to design and manufacture products of superior quality with shorter lead-time and low costs. The research project investigates a new method of solid freeform fabrication (SFF) of functional metallic components which relies on the deposition of metal in the molten state onto a substrate whose motion is guided with the direct coupling from CAD information. This droplet-based SFF requires less machining steps than both conventional manufacturing techniques such as casting and other SFF technologies such as Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and 3D printing. The research project will focus on scientific issues necessary for the successful development of a novel rapid prototyping technique. The proposed technique can generate 10,000 to 40,000 droplets/second (for orifice diameters from 25 to 100 micron and a stream speed of 5 m/s) are injected into a controlled environment chamber and are deposed onto a temperature controlled substrate where they impinge and rapidly solidify. The research project has a balance between theory and experiment, and will provide valuable findings for the rapid prototyping industry.
