Cold spray (CS) is a commercial aerosol-based process for producing thick metal and metal containing films and 3D parts. Micro cold spray is an experimental aerosol-based process that has the capability to deposit both metal and ceramic films with high relative densities at room temperature. In this talk we review a novel vented nozzle design that significantly enhances the capabilities for both cold spray and micro cold spray. These include the ability to use CS to deposit for the first time ceramics and hard metals using low cost N2 gas, to dramatically increase the deposition efficiency for MCS of ceramics, and to tune the size scale of features that are deposited. Example applications will be shown including ceramic depositions produced using CS for thermal protection and microscale metal and ceramic sensors embedded in structural parts that are produced using a combination of MCS, a novel masking process, and powder bed fusion. The ability to produce composite materials that are difficult or impossible to produce using other methods will also be highlighted.
Learning Objectives:
understand the capabilities for micro cold spray and cold spray to integrate into other AM processes such as powder bed fusion to enable novel applications such as sensors.
understand how novel vented nozzles increase deposition efficiency, allow much cheaper nitrogen to be used in place of helium, and enable cold spray of ceramics for the first time.
