direct-fabbing with thinner filaments February 26, 2010 06:54AM |
Admin Registered: 16 years ago Posts: 13,902 |
Quote
... i'm brainstorming with an aditional toolhead feeding really thin plastic-wires (0.1mm fishing line or thinner), touching with the end of the wire the surface and with a dode-laser (see [Development:Laser Cutter]) melting/fusing the tip down to the surface.
Retracting the fiber while a piece of the tip is molten and in contact with the surface should snap the wire from the molten blob, so you can place single droplets of plastic.
With moving and rotating the tool-head and feeding the wire with the moving-speed you'll draw a contour-line similar to FDM but with the thickness of the molten wire (e.g. 0.05mm or even smaller?)
For better absorbing the laser-energy you should use dark coloured or pigmented palstic ... with a CO2-laser (10600nm Wavelength) instead of a diode-laser (typically 808, 905 or 975nm) and very low powers you can melt all light or transparent plastics too ...
If someone is in need of even smaller droplets, i've developed a method of mechanically placing droplets of high viscous materials (fluids, pastes or molten materials) in diameters from some ten micrometers down to submicron range ;-)