Development Of Ceramic Inks For Direct Continuous Jet Printing

A ceramic ink that contains 30 vol% of zirconia in butyl acetate and 2 wt% of a commercial oligomeric dispersant is considered. The dispersion and viscosity of this ink was optimized in previous work; however, its conductivity is too low for continuous ink-jet printing. The conductivity has been improved by the addition of ethanol and ammonium nitrate, but this addition detrimentally affects the dispersion, viscosity, and surface tension of the ink. This problem has been largely overcome by reducing the amount of ceramic in the ink. The ceramic inks that have been developed are tested in a pressurized, continous ink-jet printer, and, depending on their performance, the ink composition is modified further.