TWI836246B - Laser additive manufacturing equipment and laser additive manufacturing method - Google Patents

Abstract

A laser additive manufacturing equipment comprises a carrier, a laser component, a moving component and a control component. The laser light emitted by the laser component faces to the carrier. The moving component is connected to the carrier. The control component is signally connected to the laser component and the moving component. The control component controls the moving component to adjust the height of the carrier in a precursor solution, and adjusts the relative position of the laser component and the carrier on the horizontal plane according to the height position. The disclosing also provides a laser additive manufacturing method. The present disclosing solves the problem that a typical solution-based direct laser additive manufacturing method can only be used in plastic materials in prior art.

Description

Laser lamination manufacturing equipment and laser lamination manufacturing method

The present invention relates to a multilayer manufacturing device and a multilayer manufacturing method, and more particularly to a high-precision, high-speed and low-energy laser multilayer manufacturing device and a laser multilayer manufacturing method.

The traditional liquid-based laser direct layering manufacturing method can only be applied to plastics. The method generally uses light-sensitive photocurable glue and cures it by light using stereolithography (SLA) or direct light processing (DLP). Therefore, precise layered manufacturing objects can be made. However, in terms of metal or other materials, only metal (or corresponding material) powder can be used to produce layered objects by high-energy layer-by-layer sintering. In addition to limiting the precision of layered objects, the design using powders also leads to high electricity costs due to high-power lasers, and also limits the speed of layered manufacturing.

Therefore, in order to solve various problems of conventional laser lamination technology, the present invention proposes a high-precision, fast and low-energy-consuming laser lamination manufacturing equipment and laser lamination manufacturing method.

To achieve the above and other purposes, the present invention provides a laser lamination manufacturing device, which includes: a carrier; a laser component, the laser light emitted by the laser component is directed toward the carrier; a moving component connected to the carrier; and a control component, the signal connecting the laser component and the moving component, the control component controls the moving component to adjust the height position of the carrier in a precursor solution, and selectively adjusts the relative position of the laser light and the carrier on the horizontal plane according to the height position.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the carrier plate is transparent relative to the wavelength of the laser light.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the laser component is a laser direct writing device.

In one embodiment of the invention, the laser component is a laser array device.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the laser component initially focuses the laser light on the upper surface of the carrier, and the control component moves the carrier from the surface position of the precursor solution toward the bottom position of the precursor solution.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the laser component initially focuses the laser light on the lower surface of the carrier plate, and the control component moves the carrier plate from the bottom position of the precursor solution toward the surface position of the precursor solution Move.

The present invention also provides a laser lamination manufacturing method for manufacturing a laminated object of a specified material. The laser lamination manufacturing method includes the following steps: providing a precursor solution that can form the specified material after being heated; providing nanoparticles of the specified material and distributing them in the precursor solution; placing a carrier in the precursor solution; emitting laser light toward the carrier with a laser component, so that the nanoparticles first located on the surface of the carrier convert the light energy of the laser light into heat energy, wherein the laser light The wavelength is at least one of the following: the absorption wavelength of the metal surface plasmon of the nanoparticle, the absorption wavelength of the light absorption of the semiconductor, and the absorption wavelength of the nanoparticle material; the heat energy generated by the nanoparticle causes the local precursor solution to react to produce the deposition of the specified material; the height position of the carrier in the precursor solution is adjusted so that a sufficient amount of the nanoparticles are located at the focal depth of the laser component; and the relative position of the laser light and the carrier on the horizontal plane is selectively adjusted.

In one embodiment of the present invention, when the laser component initially focuses the laser light on the upper surface of the carrier, the carrier is adjusted to move from the surface position of the precursor solution toward the bottom position of the precursor solution.

In one embodiment of the present invention, when the laser component initially focuses the laser light on the lower surface of the carrier, the carrier is adjusted to move from the bottom position of the precursor solution toward the surface position of the precursor solution.

The laser lamination manufacturing equipment and laser lamination manufacturing method of the present invention utilizes a precursor solution with nanoparticles of a specified material, and irradiates laser light to produce a laser-laminated object, making laser lamination technology including materials such as metals and ceramics possible, and at the same time achieving practical requirements of low energy consumption, rapidity, low cost, high precision, and high resolution.

100: Laser laminated manufacturing equipment

100a: Laser laminated manufacturing equipment

100b: Laser lamination manufacturing equipment

1: Container

2:Laser component

21: Lens

22: Laser generating element

2a:Laser component

3: Carrier board

31: Upper surface

32: Lower surface

4: Moving components

5:Control components

L: Precursor solution

N:Nanoparticles

P:Pattern

S: Layered object

S101~S107: Steps

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a laser lamination manufacturing equipment according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 2 is a schematic diagram of a laser direct writing device according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 3 is a schematic diagram of the movement of the laser lamination manufacturing equipment according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of the operation of laser lamination according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a laser lamination manufacturing equipment according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 6 is a schematic diagram of a laser lamination manufacturing device according to the third embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 7 is the absorption spectrum of silver nanoparticles.

FIG. 8 is a flow chart of a laser lamination manufacturing method according to an embodiment of the present invention.

In order to fully understand the present invention, the present invention is described in detail through the following specific embodiments and the accompanying drawings. Those skilled in the art can understand the purpose, features and effects of the present invention from the contents disclosed in this specification. It should be noted that the present invention can be implemented or applied through other different specific embodiments, and various details in this specification can also be modified and changed in various ways based on different viewpoints and applications without departing from the spirit of the present invention. The following embodiments will further describe the relevant technical content of the present invention in detail, but the disclosed content is not intended to limit the patentable scope of the present invention. The description is as follows:

The laser laminated manufacturing method of the present invention uses a precursor solution that can react locally to form the required material (metal, ceramic, dyed plastic) after irradiation with laser light, thereby manufacturing the laser laminated product. At present, the biggest problem with this method is that if you want to use laser to locally heat the precursor solution, since the heat dissipation and convection speed of the solution itself is very fast, in fact, unless the laser reaches extremely high energy, it will be difficult to achieve the purpose of local reaction. ; However, reactions that are too high are prone to bubbles, and it is often necessary to increase the viscosity of the precursor solution to reduce convection problems. The viscous precursor solution can easily lead to uneven distribution of ions participating in the reaction during laser lamination manufacturing. In other words, the accuracy (resolution) and practicality will be lost.

Therefore, in order to solve the above-mentioned various problems of laser lamination manufacturing using precursor solution, the present invention proposes a high-precision, high-speed and low-energy laser lamination manufacturing equipment and laser lamination manufacturing method.

As shown in FIGS. 1 to 4 , the laser additive manufacturing equipment 100 according to the first embodiment of the present invention includes: a laser component 2 , a carrier plate 3 , a moving component 4 and a control component 5 .

In conjunction with FIG8 , the following will describe how to use the laser lamination manufacturing equipment 100 of the first embodiment of the present invention to perform the laser lamination manufacturing method of the present invention to manufacture a lamination object S of a specified material.

In step s101, a precursor solution L that can form the aforementioned specified material after being heated is first provided in the container 1. The composition of the precursor solution L can be changed as needed. For example, for laminated objects that require copper metal to be laminated, a precursor solution that can precipitate copper metal when heated is used. The aforementioned precipitation is not limited to a chemical reaction or a physical reaction. In this embodiment, the specified material is silver metal, and silver nitrate powder (AgNO ₃ ) and polyvinylpyrrolidone ((C ₆ H ₉ NO) _n ) in ethylene glycol (HOCH ₂ -CH ₂ OH) solution are used as precursor solutions L. However, the present invention is not limited to this.

Next, in step S102, nanoparticles N of specified material are provided and distributed in the precursor solution. In this embodiment, the silver metal nanoparticles N can be processed by the silver nitrate powder contained in the precursor solution L. For example, the aforementioned precursor solution L is heated and stirred for several hours to form silver metal nanoparticles N. However, in other embodiments, silver metal nanoparticles N can also be added externally to the precursor solution L. And the present invention is not limited thereto, and the precursor solution L can be made to contain the nanoparticles N of the specified material through other physical or chemical means.

Next, in step S103, the carrier plate 3 is placed in the precursor solution L. As shown in Figure 1, if the laser light emitted by the laser component 2 is directed towards the upper surface 31 of the carrier plate 3, it is preferable that the carrier plate 3 is placed at a shallow level in the precursor solution L, that is, close to the precursor solution L surface. The precursor solution L needs to at least submerge the upper surface 31 .

Next, in step S104, the laser component 2 is used to emit laser light toward the carrier plate 3, so that the nanoparticles N first located on the surface of the carrier plate 3 (the upper surface 31 in this embodiment) convert the optical energy of the laser light into for thermal energy. The wavelength of the laser light is at least one of the following: the absorption wavelength of the metal surface plasmon of the nanoparticle N; if the specified material is a semiconductor, it can be the absorption wavelength of the semiconductor's light absorption (such as intrinsic absorption, exciton absorption, lattice vibration absorption, impurity absorption and free carrier absorption); or the absorption wavelength corresponding to various nanoparticle materials. This absorption wavelength can be the wavelength of the peak in the absorption spectrum, It can also be a certain range of relatively better absorption wavelengths near the wave peak. As shown in Figure 7, several absorption peaks of nanoparticles N of silver metal are displayed. Among them, short wavelengths have large energy, high energy consumption and can easily cause equipment damage; there is also a wave peak at 300nm, and the carrier plate 3 (made of glass in this embodiment) will absorb the wavelength of 300nm, so the laser component 2 of this embodiment Choose 450nm blue light laser. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and other favorable wavelength bands can also be selected. When the specified material is non-silver metal, the wavelength of the laser light also needs to be selected accordingly.

The designated materials are, for example, gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, etc., which have surface plasma absorption wavelengths, and the corresponding laser light wavelengths are selected. It can also be semiconductors, ceramics (such as oxides of the 6A group), and even dyed plastics. Any nanoparticles that can efficiently convert light energy into heat energy are suitable for the laser lamination manufacturing method of the present invention.

In this embodiment, as shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 , the laser component 2 is a laser direct writing device, including a lens 21 and a laser generating element 22. The laser light emitted by the laser generating element 22 is focused on the upper surface 31 of the carrier 3 through the lens 21.

In step S104, the nanoparticles N located on the upper surface 31 of the carrier 3 are excited by the laser light and convert the light energy into thermal energy. The generated thermal energy is used locally (ie close to the upper surface) in the next step S105. 31 (near the illumination point), the precursor solution L reacts to produce the deposition of the specified material. As shown in Figure 2, since the laser component 2 is a laser direct writing device, and its beam converges into a point, the laser component 2 can move along the preset pattern P on the carrier plate 3 to form the first layer. . The movement is a relative movement between the laser component 2 and the carrier board 3 , which can be achieved by moving at least one of the laser component 2 or the carrier board 3 .

Then, in step S106, since the carrier 3 is initially close to the shallow layer position of the precursor solution L, a considerable amount of silver metal has been consumed to form a layer nearby, and it is obviously too late to wait for the silver metal to slowly diffuse. If the silver metal to be deposited near the upper surface 31 is to be quickly replenished, the height position of the carrier 3 in the precursor solution L is adjusted (in this embodiment, it is to be lowered, moving from the surface position of the precursor solution L to the bottom position) so that a sufficient amount of nanoparticles N are located at the focal depth of the laser component 2. As shown in Figures 3 and 4, the moving component 4 is connected to the carrier 3, and the control component 5 is connected to the laser component 2 and the moving component 4 by signal. The control component 5 adjusts the height position of the carrier 3 in the precursor solution L to replenish the silver metal to be deposited. In this embodiment, if the speed at which the moving component 4 moves the carrier 3 is equal to the speed at which the silver metal deposition is generated, the laser component 2 does not need to change the focus position. As the carrier 3 moves downward, it continues to project laser light on the previous layer of laser deposition to form a new layer of laser deposition. The moving component 4 can be a device that can provide power, such as a stepper motor or a servo motor. The control component 5 is, for example, a control chip or a control circuit.

As shown in Figure 4, in step S107, the control component 5 selectively adjusts the relative position of the laser component 2 and the carrier board 3 on the horizontal plane (relative height direction) according to the height position of the carrier board 3, so that the newly generated The stacked layer is connected to the previous stacked layer but partially displaced, forming a non-simple columnar three-dimensional stacked object S. If the relative positions of the laser component 2 and the carrier plate 3 on the horizontal plane are not moved, and each layer just repeats the same pattern P as shown in Figure 2, a columnar object with a consistent cross-section will be formed. However, there are more low-cost and fast methods to generate columnar objects with consistent cross-sections. Therefore, the advantage of this method lies in generating laminated objects S other than columnar objects.

To sum up, the laser lamination manufacturing equipment 100 and the laser lamination manufacturing method of the present invention use the precursor solution L to match the nanoparticles N of the specified material, and irradiate the laser light to generate the laminate object S of the laser lamination, so that the lamination object S containing metal, Laser lamination technology including ceramics and other materials has become possible, and at the same time, it can meet the practical needs of low energy consumption, speed, low cost, high precision and high resolution.

Furthermore, in this embodiment, the carrier 3 is transparent to the wavelength of the laser light. That is, the carrier 3 will not absorb the laser light and generate heat energy. If the carrier 3 generates heat energy, it may cause the silver metal to be unexpectedly deposited at an unintended location, thereby resulting in poor precision and resolution of the formed layered object S.

Furthermore, the present invention proposes a second embodiment. The difference between the laser multilayer manufacturing equipment 100a of the second embodiment and the laser multilayer manufacturing equipment 100 of the first embodiment is that the laser component 2a is a laser array device. The laser array device includes multiple lenses and multiple laser generating elements at the same time, and can simultaneously project array laser patterns on the carrier 3. Compared with the laser direct writing device of the first embodiment, the laser array device of this embodiment has a better efficiency in generating multilayer objects S, but the laser array device is more expensive.

Furthermore, as shown in FIG6 , in the third embodiment of the present invention, the difference between the laser lamination manufacturing equipment 100b of the third embodiment and the laser lamination manufacturing equipment 100 of the first embodiment is that the laser component 2 projects the laser light from the bottom of the carrier 3 and focuses on the lower surface 32 of the carrier 3. The optical path can be changed and adjusted by various methods such as reflection and refraction. The laser component 2 does not necessarily have to be below the carrier 3, but the final optical path is that the laser is focused on the lower surface 32 of the carrier 3. At this time, the carrier 3 is preferably at the bottom position of the precursor solution L, and the control component 5 controls the moving component 4 to move the carrier 3, so that the carrier 3 moves from the bottom position of the precursor solution L to the surface position. The principle and method of its movement are the same as those of the first embodiment, and the laminated object S grows downward from the lower surface 32 of the carrier 3. This embodiment is more suitable for stacked objects S of low height to prevent the metal from being broken by gravity when the stacking is being formed.

The present invention has been disclosed in the above by way of an embodiment, but those familiar with the present technology should understand that the embodiment is only used to describe the present invention and should not be interpreted as limiting the scope of the present invention. It should be noted that all changes and substitutions equivalent to the embodiment should be included in the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the scope of protection of the present invention shall be based on the scope defined by the patent application.

100: Laser laminated manufacturing equipment

1:Container

2:Laser component

21:Lens

22:Laser generating element

3: Carrier board

31: Upper surface

4: Moving components

5:Control components

L: Precursor solution

N: nanoparticles

S: Layered object

Claims (3)

A laser laminated manufacturing method for manufacturing a laminated object of a specified material. The laser laminated manufacturing method includes the following steps: providing a precursor solution that can form the specified material after being heated; providing and distributing nanoparticles of the specified material In the precursor solution; dispose a carrier plate in the precursor solution; use a laser component to emit laser light toward the carrier plate, so that the nanoparticles first located on the surface of the carrier plate will emit the laser light Light energy is converted into thermal energy, wherein the wavelength of the laser light is at least one of the following: the absorption wavelength of the metal surface plasmon of the nanoparticle, the absorption wavelength of the light absorption of the semiconductor, and the absorption wavelength of the nanoparticle material; the nanoparticle The heat energy generated by the nanoparticles causes the local precursor solution to react to produce the deposition of the specified material; adjust the height position of the carrier plate in the precursor solution so that a sufficient amount of the nanoparticles and the precursor solution are located in the The focusing depth of the laser component; and selectively adjusting the relative position of the laser light and the carrier plate on the horizontal plane. The laser lamination manufacturing method as described in claim 1, wherein the laser light is initially focused on the upper surface of the carrier when the laser component is formed, and the carrier is adjusted to move from the surface position of the precursor solution toward the bottom position of the precursor solution. The laser lamination manufacturing method as described in claim 1, wherein the laser light is initially focused on the lower surface of the carrier when the laser component is formed, and the carrier is adjusted to move from the bottom position of the precursor solution toward the surface position of the precursor solution.

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