Polymer Spray Deposition: A Novel Aerosol-Based, Electrostatic Digital Deposition System for Additive Manufacturing
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In order to address some of the shortcomings from traditional additive manufacturing methods, PARC, a Xerox Company, is developing a new additive manufacturing method for polymers that uses electrostatic patterning in combination with a new method of creating aerosols to directly pattern a wide range of thermoplastics with high resolution. Our aerosol technology takes advantage of the non-Newtonian nature of polymers to create monodisperse small droplets. In addition, we leverage ionographic printing techniques to pattern thick substrates and create digital thin films. This technology can bring 3D printing of polymers into a performance range where the technology can be used to replace more traditional techniques such as injection molding and machining.