Jetting Complex Fluids containing Pigments and Resins

We have previously studied DoD jetting of complex model fluids based on dilute polymer solutions, resulting in the identification of a new regime of polymer jetting and some basic rules for predicting the limiting polymeric concentrations under real conditions such as print head nozzle diameter, jetting speed, solvent quality and polymer molecular weights [1, 2]. There has been no systematic experimental study of the effect of particles on DoD scale jetting, despite the ground-breaking work by Furbank and Morris [3] as reported in NIP17 for the effects of particles on dripping, although theoretical modelling for liquid bridges/filaments containing particles has been recently published [4] and could be relevant to local thinning of DoD ligaments.A series of pigmented inks in the solvent dipropylene glycol methyl ether (DPM) has been used to help study effects of pigment particle size (d90 = 3.6, 2.6, 1.6, 1.0, 0.8 μm) on DoD …