Research on technology of additive manufacturing 3D metallic microstructure by maskless localized electrodepositing method

Abstract

The simulation and process research on additive manufacturing nickel three-dimensional microstructure by maskless localized electrodeposition with cone-shaped micro anode and micro fluidic electrolyte were carried out in this paper. The boundary conditions were set according to the process parameters of the maskless localized electrodeposition, the micro electrodepositing area was numerically simulated by using COMSOL Multiphysics software to analyze the influence of flow field distribution and electric field distribution on actual processing, the simulation results show that the factors affecting localized electrodeposition are as follow: Among the three factors, the interelectrode voltage has the greatest effect on the process, the duty cycle has the smallest effect, and the effect of the interelectrode gap is moderate. The CAD modelling and slice processing of 3D microstructure, and the movement path optimizing of electrode were completed with reference to the additive manufacturing method. The effects of main process parameters such as interelectrode voltage, pulse duty cycle and interelectrode gap on experimental results were studied by controlling single variable method and orthogonal experiment method. Study results demonstrate: Electrode shape, interelectrode voltage, pulse current duty cycle and interelectrode gap have different effects on microdeposition rate, surface morphology of microstructure and consistency of deposition rate. The optimized process parameters after orthogonal experiments are as follow: Interelectrode voltage(4V), pulse duty cycle(0.4), interelectrode gap(5μm), pulse frequency(10KHz), the movement speed of coordinate table’s X and Y axis are both 1μm/s, and Z axis is 5μm/s. The better electrodepositing results have been obtained: the electrodepositing rate may reach 460μm3/s and the simple nickel microstructure (nickel cylinder) has a maximum aspect ratio of 7:1.