Producing molten metal droplets with a pneumatic droplet-on-demand generator

Droplets of molten indium, tin, lead, and zinc were produced with the droplet generator. Drops with diameters ranging from 0.17 to 0.60 mm were formed using nozzles 0.076-0.254 mm in diameter. It was important to keep the oxygen content in the test chamber below 150 ppm, otherwise metal oxidized as it emerged and blocked the nozzle. By coordinating droplet formation with the movement of an x-y stage placed beneath the droplet generator, droplets could be place in arbitrary patterns such as a straight line, circle, triangle or grid.