In addition to its application in media printing, inkjet printing is becoming an increasingly attractive option for the distribution and patterning of materials for a wide variety of applications. In this study a commercial inkjet printer was modified to study the resolution of fluid dot placement required to fabricate 3D multi-material patterns layer by layer. A Javabased computer program was developed to convert stereolithography (STL) data layer by layer, control ink cartridges individually and print ink with customized fluid dot placement arrangements. The study found that complement printing between nozzles which are 30 µm in diameter and 144 µm apart is essential to achieve a sufficiently dense 3D pattern. When printed with 36 µm vertical spacing a layer thickness of 1.30 µm is achievable, and when printing layer by layer, the thickness increases almost at a linear rate.

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Metal Laser Sintering Combined with High Speed Milling is the technology in which high speed cutting is united with the selective laser sintering process. By changing the conditions of laser beam irradiation, it is possible to build a sintered porous media which has a hole in an arbitrary part by this process. If the mold tool of this structure is used for injection molding, it is proved that the compressed air imprisoned in the mold and the gas coming out of resin are discharged from it, poor molding can be reduced. However, as sintered porous media is hard to control for the size and position of an ordered macroporous structure, it is difficult to build porous media with an ordered macroporous structure deliberately. This results in a smaller amount of airflow and a greater variation in airflow. In order to solve this problem, latticework is proposed as a new gas permeable structure in this paper. Different from a lower density sintered structure, metallic powder is sintered and fused using a laser beam with a high energy density, and fusion is carried out into the latticework structure. The fused gaps of the structure serve as a hole. Since each hole will keep the position and become the ordered macroporous structure even if lamination continues, the improvement in performance of gas permeability is expected. The airflow equation for the structural design to satisfy a required airflow rate is also examined in this paper.

We are now engaged in the study on a resin flow control molding method in which molecules and fillers are positively oriented by displacing resin flows in the mold. We intend to confirm that the resin flow control molding method can properly control the orientation of fibers in glass fiber reinforced polypropylene moldings. We have also attempted to improve physical properties of poly-lactic acid molded by the resin flow control molding method. We have directly observed the process of filling resins into a glass-inserted mold to prove effectiveness of the resin flow control molding method.

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