Fundamental Research On Copper Rapid Prototyping By Friction-assisted Jet Electrodeposition

Rapid manufacturing of metal parts is one of the important objectives of rapid prototyping technology,and it is also a research hotspot in the field of rapid prototyping.The traditional rapid prototyping technology such as EBSM technology,SLS technology,SLM technology and so on is mature,but the cost is high and generally requires post-treatment process.Although the electroforming technology has lower cost,its deposition rate is low and the deposition quality is poor.Jet electrodeposition is a new electroplating technology in recent years.It has the advantages of low cost,selective deposition,fast deposition speed and high deposition precision,but the deposition quality and deposition efficiency still need to be improved,and the introduction of friction assistance can effectively solve this problem.Therefore,this paper aims at achieving rapid prototyping through friction-assisted jet electrodeposition technology,designs and researches the friction-assisted jet electrodeposition rapid prototyping equipment system and studies the effect of current density,nozzle scanning speed,injection pressure of the three basic process parameters and the friction on deposition by depositing copper on 304 stainless steel,so as to obtain the optimal process parameter which is suitable for rapid prototyping of copper and prepares high-quality copper deposition layer with thickness of at least 1.5 mm.Firstly,the friction-assisted jet electrodeposition rapid prototyping equipment system was designed by this paper.The equipment includes plating solutions circulation system,plating solutions spray system,temperature control heating system,three-dimensional motion system,equipment control system and the remaining key parts.The overall control of the deposition process is realized through the joint control of the control system to other systems,so as to meet the needs of the friction-assisted jet electrodeposition rapid prototyping.Secondly,three sets of single factor experiment were carried out respectively to study the current density,nozzle scanning speed and spray pressure of the three process basic parameters on the influence of deposition layers based on the designed equipment system,after that friction was introduced in part of the preparatory experiments which proved that introducing friction could effectively improve the limiting current density and determined that the basic process parameter combination suitable for the friction-assisted jet electrodeposition was the current density of 400 A/dm²,the nozzle scanning speed of 10mm/s and the spray pressure of 0.24 MPa.In order to further study the influence of the friction on deposition,the flow field on the cathode substrate surface before and after friction was simulated firstly and found that the introduction of friction could effectively improve the flow pattern and enhance the mean turbulence intensity.Then a set of single factor experiments with radial pressure as a variable was designed to study the influence of the friction on copper deposition layers and found that introducing friction improved the surface morphology of copper deposition layers significantly,the surface roughness Ra decreased from 3.4562?m to less than 0.3415?m,the deposition efficiency decreased slightly but was always higher than 1.95?m/min,the compactness,hardness and wear resistance of the copper deposition layers were improved significantly.When the radial pressure was 2.565 N,the overall quality of the copper deposition layer was the best,the deposition efficiency was 2.029?m/min,the hardness was233.5 HV_0.05 which was 38.1%higher than that without friction and the wear loss was 0.05mg which indicated that the wear resistance was 720%higher than that without friction.Finally,based on the optimal radial pressure of 2.565 N,the copper deposition layer with thickness of 1.9 mm which was similar to the mirror effect and smooth uniform was prepared successfully,its microhardness was 232.6 HV_0.05 and wear weight loss was 0.06mg.The results showed that friction-assisted jet electrodeposition technology could ensure the deposition efficiency and obtain good deposition quality at the same time.It also showed that the friction-assisted jet electrodeposition technology was feasible for rapid prototyping.