A dry powder jet printer for dispensing and combinatorial research

In this letter we describe a simple device built from a laboratory ultrasonic generator and a glass capillary that can ‘jet’ samples of dry powder of mass down to 0.05 mg. Placed over a three-axis table, it provides an ink-jet printer for powders. It can be used for any application requiring precise placement of powder samples but our primary interest is its use in so-called second generation solid freeforming (SFF). Particularly useful in selective laser sintering, the method allows each layer of powder to be patterned with different compositions so that both shape and composition of an entire engineering component can be downloaded from a computer file.