Open Access

Frass (fine powdery refuse or fragile perforated wood produced by the activity of boring insects) of larvae of the European house borer (EHB) and of drywood termites was tested as a natural and novel feedstock for 3D-printing of wood-based materials. Small particles produced by the drywood termite Incisitermes marginipennis and the EHB Hylotrupes bajulus during feeding in construction timber, were used. Frass is a powdery material of particularly consistent quality that is essentially biologically processed wood mixed with debris of wood and faeces. The filigree-like particles flow easily permitting the build-up of woodbased structures in a layer wise fashion using the Binder Jetting printing process. The Quality of powders produced by different insect species was compared along with the processing steps and properties of the printed parts. Drywood termite frass with a Hausner Ratio HR = 1.1 with ρBulk = 0.67 g/cm3 and ρTap = 0.74 g/cm3 was perfectly suited to deposition of uniformly packed layers in 3D printing. We suggest that a variety of naturally available feedstocks could be used in environmentally responsible approaches to scientific material sciences/additive manufacturing.

Tapes, cast by blade deposition of a lithium aluminosilicate glass slurry, were sintered using a YAG-fiber laser, with the aim of finding suitable parameters for an additive manufacturing process based on layer-wise slurry deposition and selective laser densification. The influence of the laser parameters (output power and scan velocity) on the sintering was evaluated, by scanning electron microscopy and by X-ray diffraction, on the basis of the quality of the processed layer. Well densified samples could be obtained only in a small window of values for the output power and the scan velocity. The measurement of the width of a set of single scanned lines allowed also to estimate the minimum resolution of the system along the layer plane.

Powder based Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes are widely used for metallic and polymeric materials, but rarely commercially used for ceramic materials, especially for technical ceramics. This seemingly contradicting observation is explained by the fact that in powder based AM, a dry flowable powder needs to be used. Technical ceramics powders are in fact typically very fine and poorly flowable, which makes them not suitable for AM. The layerwise slurry deposition (LSD) is an innovative process for the deposition of powder layers with a high packing density for powder based AM. In the LSD process, a ceramic slurry is deposited to form thin powder layers, rather than using a dry powder This allows the use of fine powders and achieves high packing density (55-60%) in the layers after drying. When coupled with a printing head or with a laser source, the LSD enables novel AM technologies which are similar to *Denotes Presenter 42nd International Conference & Exposition on Advanced Ceramics & Composites 127 Abstracts the 3D printing or selective laser sintering, but taking advantage of having a highly dense powder bed. The LSD -3D printing, in particular, offers the potential of producing large (> 100 mm) and high quality ceramic parts, with microstructure and properties similar to traditional processing. This presentation will give an overview of the milestones in the development of this technology, with focus on the latest results applied both to silicate and to technical ceramics.

Advancements in the fields of biocompatible materials, manufacturing processes, computational methods and medicine have led to the emergence of a new field: micro-scale scaffolds for bone replacement and regeneration. Yet most such scaffolds produced today are characterized by very basic geometry, and their microstructure differs greatly from that of the actual tissue they are intended to replace. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for generating micro-scale scaffolds based on processing actual micro-CT images and then reconstructing a highly accurate geometrical model. This model is manufactured by means of a state-of-the-art 3D additive manufacturing process from biocompatible materials. At the micro-scale level, these scaffolds are very similar to the original tissue, thus interfacing better with the surrounding tissue and facilitating more efficient rehabilitation for the patient. Moreover, the approach facilitates the design and manufacture of patient-specific scaffolds which can copy patients’ exact structural and mechanical characteristics, taking into account their physical condition and medical history. By means of multi-resolution volumetric modeling methods, scaffold porosity can also be adapted according to specific mechanical requirements. The process of designing and manufacturing micro-scale scaffolds involves five major stages: (a) building a volumetric multi-resolution model from micro-CT images; (b) generation of surface geometric model in STL format; (c) additive manufacturing of the scaffold; (d) scaffold shape verification relative to the geometric design; and (e) verification of mechanical properties through finite element analysis. In this research, all the proposed stages of the approach were tested. The input included micro-CT scans of porous ceramic structure, which is quite similar to commercial porous scaffolds. The results show that the proposed method is feasible for design and manufacture of micro-scale scaffolds.

The Layerwise Slurry Deposition is a technology for the deposition of highly packed powder layers. A powder bed is achieved by depositing and drying layers of a ceramic suspension by means of a doctor blade. This deposition technique was combined with the binder jetting technology to develop a novel Additive Manufacturing technology, named LSD-print. The LSD-print was applied to a porcelain ceramic. It is shown that it was possible to produce parts with high definition, good surface finish and at the same time having physical and mechanical properties close to those of traditionally processed porcelain, e.g. by slip casting. This technology shows high future potential for being integrated alongside traditional production of porce-lain, as it is easily scalable to large areas while maintaining a good definition. Both the Layerwise Slurry Deposition method and the binder jetting technologies are readily scalable to areas as large as > 1 m2.