Your Expert for Innovative Ceramic-to-Metal Integrated Systems:
Ceramic 3D printing
Ceramic 3D printing has been on everyone's lips for a few years now and has had a few hypes and names, such as Rapid Prototyping (RP), Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF), Additive Manufacturing (AM) or like the currently popular name 3D printing. The hypes were born again and again from the idea that with the help of the 3D printer printed Al2O3 components could be produced to anybody and in the shortest possible time and that conventional manufacturing would be unnecessary in the future.
Every new hype vanished when it became clear that this would not be the case. Despite all this, 3D printed technical ceramics, especially for the material classes metal and plastics, have been making their way into industry for years. The market is inferior to steady growth. Especially at trade fairs, such as the annual Formnext in Frankfurt, it is always clear how strong the number of suppliers of 3D printing presses and service providers is. The area of ceramic 3D printing, especially technical ceramics, is lagging behind metals and plastics. This is mainly due to the high demands on technical ceramics and their non-trivial manufacturing process.
Aluminum oxide ceramic 3D Printing
At present, there are only two major machine suppliers for the 3D printing of technical ceramics on the market, Lithoz, which developed the LCM technology based on photo-crosslinkable polymers, and the company 3DCERAM, which uses the same physical basis for the laser-based stereolithography process for technical ceramics successfully implemented. Alumina Systems has been working closely with Lithoz for more than 5 years, and has made LCM technology industry-ready within a few months.
3D printed ceramic components
The 3D printing in the house Alumina was strengthened by the purchase of the largest commercially available 3D printer of the company 3DCERAM. The printer has a construction area of 600 mm x 600 mm and thus enables the production of 3D printed components in unprecedented dimensions. Furthermore, the small or series production of special parts is possible. Alumina Systems claims to be the undisputed leader in 3D printing of technical ceramics through innovation and customer proximity. For this, Alumina Systems purchased special IP to develop its own 3D printing process for industrial use.
The new process, which will be available as an alpha tool from Alumina at the beginning of 2020, is laser-induced slip casting. This process processes many times cheaper ceramic materials than any other printer available on the market. In addition, the assembly times are lower and the component geometry in terms of wall thickness and component size physically virtually unlimited. Since this process produces a green body with only a low binder content, a lengthy and delicate debinding process, as required by the other processes, is obsolete. It follows that process reliability is significantly increased and costs and time for thermal aftertreatment are significantly reduced.
Ceramic prototyping in ceramic 3D printing
In terms of innovation and the variety of component geometries, Alumina Systems is already the leading company in ceramic 3D printing and will continue to do so in the future.
Ceramic 3D printing - capacitor made of Al2O3
Ceramic 3D printing - Al2O3 heat exchanger
Ceramic 3D printing - mixing section of Al2O3
Ceramic 3D printing - Al2O3 separation column