A study of a material jetting based color 3d printing system by using multiple piezoelectric heads

A traditional addictive manufacturing (AM) system is composed of 3D digital design technology, chromatics, material jetting, material science, digital manufacturing and intelligent control of a mechatronics system. However, there are plenty of disadvantages in such a system such as uneven size of droplet, unstable printing process and low quality of end product, which may even cause the piezoelectric head and module damage. The main purpose of this study is to develop a Material Jetting (MJ)-based color 3D manufacturing system by using multiple piezoelectric heads, optimizing sub-system parameter and designing a stable module. First of all, capability of printing with five different colors (CMYKW) and ultraviolet (UV) curable support material were developed. The waveform editing and printing program planning were integrated to maximize the performance of print modules. So far, the integration of color mixing, piezo material process, CMYKWS curable process and multi-inkjet head control has been carried out in the system. The purpose of this paper is to provide a powerful approach for colorful 3D object printing. The experimental results show that this color based 3D printing system could achieve both high resolution of 600dpi and more than 256 colors. This study conforms to the future development trend and market demand on color 3D additive manufacturing.