Material jetting (MJ) operates in a similar fashion to 2D printers. The process is similar to binder jetting with one key difference, instead of a binder being jetted through the printhead, a metallic material that is in suspension with the binder is jetted. The jetted metal is deposited on the build tray layer by layer, until the components are complete. The metal particles being jetted are nanoscale and the resulting layer thickness is extremely thin compared with other additive technologies. These ultra-thin layers produce very high-resolution parts where the layers are nearly invisible to the human eye. Like binder jet technology, after printing, the material jetted parts require debinding and sintering to consolidate the material into a near full density geometry.
Advantages of Material jetting (MJ) technology
Material jetting (MJ) utilizes nanoscale metal powders to create extremely thin layers, as a result, MJ parts can have very smooth surfaces with little to no indication of support materials after removal. The Material jetting process is highly accurate, fast and has a high output capacity. Metal extrusion is an excellent process when used as a prototyping technology because it can print very fine layers and achieve precision similar to plastic models, all while being quite cost affective. This is an extremely capable prototyping technology because of its fast build times and significantly reduced cost as compared to laser sintering. Metal filament extrusion 3D printing could very well become the go-to technology for cost-effective metal prototyping.
Disadvantages of Material jetting (MJ) technology
The cost of the raw nanoscale metal powder materials can be quite expensive as compared to most other metal additive manufacturing technologies. Material jetting of components can take more time than other sinter-based metal additive manufacturing technologies because only very small droplets of material are deposited over a small part of the build area at a time.