Looking for advice/help on my senior design project

[Melissa]

Hi,

I am working on my senior design project (I graduate in December in mechanical engineering) and am trying to come up with ideas to apply glue (I would like to use as many off-the-shelf products as possible). One idea that has come up is using an inkjet printhead for dispensing the glue. I have thought of a number of questions that I need help answering so that I can investigate this problem further (these are the questions I cant seem to answer by searching online). These are some questions:

1. Does any one know where I can find basic material properties of inks in inkjets? I am looking for the average density, viscosity, etc. I been looking and can't seem to find anything.

2. I am toying with the idea of using glue (instead of ink) inside of an inkjet printhead. I can think of some potential problems but nothing that will keep me from looking into this some more. Any thoughts?

3. Has anyone used the Xaar 1001 printhead? (http://xaar.com/product_det.asp?id=5025&sec_id=2546). Any thoughts?

Anything addressing this topic is completely welcomed!!!!!!

And yes, I am also looking into some sprayers for the glue that are made for glue - if anyone has had good experience with something particular, please let me know!!!!!!

Thanks for the help
Melissa

 

[Molitor]

You might want to look at Xerox Phaser solid ink printers. They use blocks of ink which is heated and fused to the paper, so the system seems a bit like a hot-melt glue + offset printing scheme:

http://www.office.xerox.com/solid-ink/solid-ink-sticks/enus.html

Using any type of adhesive through standard, off-the-shelf inkjet printheads strikes me as having insurmountable clog problems, as they clog enough as it is with standard ink.

 

[panos]

Perhaps you could apply a thin film of water-soluble glue on the paper, let it dry, and then run it through the printer with cartridges containing distilled water. The "printed" areas would become sticky again.

 

[websnail]

I'm wondering if there would be a two parter that's very low in viscosity that could use a special "colour profile" to print the glue in the right places and on to each other.

I have my doubts but aside from that, you'd want to consider the heat characterstics and functions of the different inkjets too... Epson using cold, most other inkjet systems using a heated system..

Beyond that I'm waaay out of my depth... please do report back though, always interested in extending my knowledge like this

 

[Smile]

You epson printer because it uses cold method. I dont think you want to heat your glue.

 

[Grandad35]

This post describes a way to measure an inks viscosity it is only about twice that of water. Post #2 in the same thread describes a way to measure the surface tension of ink typically only about that of water. I dont know of any glues that have a viscosity and surface tension in those ranges. In addition to guaranteed clogs on any inkjet, an additional problem is that an inkjet printer only applies an average of about 1 CC of ink over an 8x10 print a coverage of only about 2 microns. This is unlikely to lay down enough glue to give decent adhesion.

Adhesives are obviously widely used in industry - Google for hot melt adhesives for information on how adhesives are normally applied.

 

[Smile]

perhaps you should do something better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rxk6nlN9uM&feature=related