Ultrasonic assisted 3D printing (UA3DP) based on screw material extrusion

Screw-based material extrusion is a prominent 3D printing technology that finds applications across various industrial sectors, including aerospace, architecture, and medicine. However, using high-viscosity and high-solid materials often leads to flow restrictions and nozzle blockages during the extrusion process. This results in suboptimal moulding quality or even complete failure, which has emerged as a significant bottleneck hindering the advancement of extrusion-based 3D printing. To solve this problem, this paper combines the traditional screw extrusion with ultrasonic vibration and proposes a novel ultrasonic assisted 3D Printing technique. Firstly, a 3D printing device equipped with a screw ultrasonic vibration unit was designed and built. Then, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and experiments were carried out with high solid content clay to investigate the effectiveness of this technology. The results reveal that ultrasonic vibration enhances the performance of traditional screw-based 3D printing significantly, including higher flow rate, fewer surface defects, and better printability with smaller nozzle sizes.