Bubble entrainment from acoustically driven meniscus shape deformations in a piezo-acoustic drop-on-demand inkjet nozzle

ORAL

Abstract

In piezo acoustic Drop-On-Demand (DOD) inkjet printing a single droplet is produced for each piezo driving pulse. A phenomenon that disturbs the droplet formation process is the entrainment of bubbles in the ink channel. Here, we study bubble entrainment during DOD inkjet printing as a result of meniscus deformations. We show that the fundamental low-frequency acoustic resonance mode of the ink channel (7 kHz) drives the high-amplitude meniscus motion and the corresponding concave meniscus shape. The higher frequency traveling acoustic waves (110 kHz) focus the flow at the concave meniscus which drives the meniscus shape deformations resulting in bubble entrainment. Depending on the piezo driving pulse length, we observe alternating windows of bubble entrainment and no bubble entrainment resulting from the interference of the high frequency acoustic waves that are mainly generated at the rising and falling edges of the piezo driving pulse.

*This work is part of an Industrial Partnership Programme of the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), which is financially supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This research program is co-financed by Océ-Technologies B.V., University of Twente, and Eindhoven University of Technology.

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Presenters

  • Maaike Rump

    • Univ of Twente

Authors

  • Maaike Rump

    • Univ of Twente

  • Tim Segers

    • Physics of Fluids, University of Twente, The Netherlands
    • University of Twente
    • Univ of Twente

  • Arjan Fraters

    • University of Twente
    • Univ of Twente

  • Roger Jeurissen

    • Eindhoven University of Technology

  • Marc van den Berg

    • Océ Technologies B.V.
    • Océ-Technologies B.V.

  • Hans Reinten

    • Océ Technologies B.V.
    • Océ-Technologies B.V.

  • Youri de Loore

    • Océ Technologies B.V.
    • Océ-Technologies B.V.

  • Herman Wijshoff

    • Océ Technologies B.V., The Netherlands, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
    • Océ Technologies B.V.
    • Océ-Technologies B.V.

  • Detlef Lohse

    • University of Twente
    • Physics of Fluids and Max Planck Center for Complex Fluids Dynamics, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
    • Univ of Twente
    • Univ of Twente, Max Plank Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization
    • Twente Tech Univ
    • University of Twente, Max Planck Center for complex fluid dynamics

  • Michel Versluis

    • Physics of Fluids group, MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, TechMed Centre, University of Twente
    • Univ of Twente
    • University of Twente
    • University Twente