R. Gopalakrishnan
University of Memphis, P3ARL Technologies, Inc., Tennessee, United States
Keywords: cohesive, ceramics, alloys, low feed rate, graded materials
We are advancing a powder feeder for Micro-Directed Energy Deposition – especially, the ~1 g/hr – 1 g/min rates at which powder particles smaller than 50 microns are fed to the nozzle head where the laser creates the melt pool to attain mm or sub-mm features on the surface being treated. Our patented ultrasonic powder dispersion technology allows overcoming the challenges of feeding cohesive powders to DED processes, especially cohesive powders with particle size around ~20 microns. This technology can potentially enables the production of sub-mm features with high precision. Paper in Aerosol Science and Technology: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02786826.2018.1559920 Paper in Powder Technology: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0032591020307543?via%3Dihub US patent issued in 2022: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11358112B2/en Quick demo video that you can show to folks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJEfM5fQokg&t=110s 25-min overview of the technology: https://youtu.be/M2Z5G8cve80?si=scSIDYF71LKXk8-q