BASIC STUDY ON ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING APPLYING SUPERCOOLING PHENOMENON

抄録

Some additive manufacturing processes include melting and solidifying the material for forming the target shape by layer by layer. Rapid heating and cooling techniques have been discussed by many researchers until now; however, these processes are often dealt with as different challenges. For example, many researchers used high-power laser for rapid melting, and developed cooling device for rapid solidification to achieve high deposition efficiency, whereas heating and cooling are totally opposite problems leading much energy consumption when they are discussed separately. By discussing these contradicted challenges at the same time, it is possible to find a new challenge for avoiding unnecessary heat energy supply onto the deposition point to achieve high efficiency. This discussion is also important to use the materials with low melting temperature in additive manufacturing, which often requires a high-performance cooling system. This study proposes an additive manufacturing process applying supercooling phenomenon. Supercooling is a metastable state in which a material keeps liquid phase even under its melting temperature, and immediately solidifies by applying disturbance. This study evaluates the controllability and applicability of supercooling on the deposition process by dropping droplets of supercooled H₂O and gallium onto the baseplate.