Ultrasonic 'hot' end.

1: Ultrasonic solder head.
2: Ultrasonic fogger melting plastic (probably polystyrene, melting point ~240°C)

It looks like commercial ultrasonic foggers have enough power to melt plastic. I wonder if one could replace the heater block in a 'hot' end so that plastic is heated immediately before leaving the nozzle, reducing or eliminating the issues with heat from the heaterblock travelling back up the filament and gunging up the extruder (and coincidentally eliminating warm-up time and temperature change delay)? Potential issues could be cooling of the plastic by the nozzle itself requiring it to be heated to a higher temperature before extrusion (bond the nozzle to the ultrasonic transducer so the nozzle itself heats the plastic?), overloading of the ultrasonic transducer due to no longer being immersed in water, vibration causing damage to the extruder (rubber isolation?), and irritation of any nearby household pets.
Unfortunately, I have neither a RepRap, an ultrasonic fogger, nor a budget, so I have not had a chance to test any of this.

Ah, they put solder on bare plastics. Doesn't that look like manufacturing PCB-less electronics?

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Traumflug Wrote:
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> Ah, they put solder on bare plastics. Doesn't that
> look like manufacturing PCB-less electronics?


If it were ...
Could be glass though.




I like the idea, too bad I didn't come up with it. I have a high power ultasonic mister here, nothing that could be placed on a extruder, its a 6 head 200W version but certainty worth a try to see how well it melts filament.

I don't think a whole ultrasonic mister, even a single head would be the optimal solution. There are however smd piezo transducers which could be soldered on the inside of a nozzle so that they come in direct contact with the filament.
For experimentation we would need a high end function generator so we can tune them to the right frequency.

The goal would be to archive the best possible resonance.