Toner manufacturing process involves a series op operations including mixing, extruding, crushing and pulverizing. Simulation of such processes requires modeling of microscopic properties of material as well as macroscopic behavior of billions of particles in full size production equipment. Scale-up from prototype to full scale is difficult unless the details of the process and physical properties of the material are understood in from a single particle to a large collection of particles.In this paper, we use two models and link them to predict the overall toner production process. We use a DEM model of individual particles while we use a flow model to describe the behavior of. The limitation of such computations is the number of particles. Even a small scale prototype requires analysis of billions of particles which is not practical with everyday computers. Thus, we perform simple experiments to validate the DEM models with smaller number of particles. The purpose of this analysis is to find a direct relationship with measurable physical properties of toners and the motion and particle size history.
A. Ecer, V. Rubek, K. Arican, "Simulation of Toner Manufacturing Process" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP27), 2011, pp 610 - 611, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2011.27.1.art00052_2