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Additive manufacturing (AM) is developing rapidly due to itsflexibility in producing complex geometries and tailored material compositions. However, AM processes are characterized by intrinsic limitations concerning their resolution and surface finish, which are related to the layer-by-layer stacking process. Herein, a self-organization process is promoted as an approach to improve surface quality and achieve optimization of 3D minimal surface lightweight structures. The self-organization is activated after the powder bed 3D printing process via local melting, thereby allowing surface tension-driven viscous flow.The surface roughness Ra (arithmetic average of the roughness profile) could bedecreased by a factor of 1000 and transparent lenses and complex gyroid structures could be produced for demonstration. The concept of self-organization is further elaborated by incorporating external magnetic fields to intentionally manipulate magnetic particles, which are mixed with the polymer before printing and self-organization. This concept can be applied to develop programmable materials with specific microtextures responding to the external physical conditions.
In powder-based Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes, an object is produced by successively depositing thin layers of a powder material and by inscribing the cross section of the object in each layer. The main methods to inscribe a layer are by binder jetting (also known as powder 3D printing) or by selective laser sintering/melting (SLS/SLM).
Powder-based AM processes have found wide application for several metallic, polymeric and also ceramic materials, due to their advantages in combining flexibility, easy upscaling and (often) good material properties of their products.
The deposition of homogeneous layers is key to the reproducibility of these processes and has a direct influence on the quality of the final parts. Accordingly, powder properties such as particle size distribution, shape, roughness and process related properties such as powder flowability and packing density need to be carefully evaluated.
Due to these requirements, these processes have been so far precluded to find commercial use for certain applications. In the following, two outstanding cases will be presented.
A first example is that powder-based AM processes are widely used for many metallic and polymeric materials, but they find no commercial application for most technical ceramics.
This seemingly contradicting observation is explained by the fact that in powder based AM, a dry flowable powder needs to be used. The processing of technical ceramics in fact typically requires very fine and poorly flowable powder, which makes them not suitable for the standard processes. There have been several approaches to adapt the raw materials to the process (e.g. by granulation), but in order to maintain the superior properties of technical ceramics it seems necessary to follow the opposite approach and adapt the process to the raw materials instead.
This was the motivation for developing the Layerwise Slurry Deposition (LSD), an innovative process for the deposition of powder layers with a high packing density. In the LSD process, a ceramic slurry is deposited to form thin powder layers, rather than using a dry powder. This allows achieving high packing density (55-60%) in the layers after drying. It is also important, that standard ceramic raw materials can be used. When coupled with a printing head or with a laser source, the LSD enables novel AM technologies which are similar to 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. Moreover, due to the compact powder bed, no support structures are required for fixation of the part in the printing process.
Figure 1 shows the schematics of the working principle of the LSD-3D print and illustrates some examples of the resolution and features achievable.
The second outstanding case here described is the application of powder-based AM in environments with reduced or zero gravity. The vision is to be able to produce repair parts, tools and other objects during a space mission, such as on the International Space Station (ISS), without the need of delivering such parts from Earth or carrying them during the mission. AM technologies are also envisioned to play an important role even for future missions to bring mankind to colonize other planets, be it on Mars or on the Moon. In this situation, reduced gravity is also experienced (the gravitational acceleration is 0.16 g on the Moon and 0.38 g on Mars).
These environments cause the use of AM powder technologies to be very problematic: the powder layers need to be stabilized in order to avoid dispersion of the particles in the chamber. This is impossible for standard AM powder deposition systems, which rely on gravitation to spread the powder.
Also in this case, an innovative approach has been implemented to face this technological challenge. The application of a gas flow through a powder has a very strong effect on its flowability, by generating a force on each particle, which is following the gas flow field. This principle can be applied in a simple setup such as the one shown in Figure 2.
In this setup, the gas flow causes an average pressure on the powder bed in direction of the arrows, generating a stabilizing effect which acts in the same direction of the gravitational force. This effect can be used in addition to normal gravity on Earth to achieve a better stabilization of 3D printed parts in the powder bed. In this case, even a significant increase of packing density of the powder was measured, compared to the same experimental setup without gas flow. This is due to the fact that the force on each single particle follows the gas flow field, which is guiding the particles to settle between the pores of the powder bed, thus achieving an efficient packing.
The same principle can be applied in absence of gravitation, where the gas flow acts to stabilize the powder layers. It has been shown that ceramic powder could be deposited in layers and laser sintered in µ-gravity conditions during a DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) campaign of parabolic flights, as shown in Figure 2. A follow-up campaign is dedicated to the deposition of metallic (stainless steel) powder in inert atmosphere and to study the effects of laser melting in µ-gravity.
In conclusion, the description of these two example cases shows how the development of novel technological processes can address some of the limitations of standard powder-based AM, in order to enable the use of new materials, such as technical ceramics, or to tackle the challenges of AM in space.
A new approach for fabrication of ceramic components with inner channels is proposed, as a result of the combination of two additive and one subtractive manufacturing processes. In this project, porcelain parts are manufactured by the Layerwise Slurry Deposition (LSD) process, meanwhile end milling and Direct Ink Writing (DIW) are applied to create channels on the surface of the deposited ceramic. Unique to the LSD process is the Formation of a freestanding powder bed with a mechanical strength comparable to conventional slip casted ceramic green bodies. Combining these three processes allows the manufacturing of ceramic objects containing an internal path of ink, which in this case was a graphite-based ink that can be further eliminated by heat treatment to obtain a porcelain object embedded with channels. The results show the capabilities of this method and its potential to fabricate not only parts with inner channels, but also multi-material and multi-functional components (such as integrated electronic circuits).
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.
In additive manufacturing the powder bed based processes binder jetting and powder bed fusion are increasingly used also for the production of ceramics. Final part properties depend to a high percentage on the powder bed density. Therefore, the aim is to use the best combination of powder deposition method and powder which leads to a high packing of the particles. The influence of flowability, powder properties and deposition process on the powder bed density is discussed and the different deposition processes including slurry-based ones are reviewed.
It turns out that powder bed density reached by slurry-based layer deposition exceeds conventional powder deposition, however, layer drying and depowdering are extra steps or more time-consuming for the slurry route.
Depending on the material properties needed the most suitable process for the part has to be selected.
Powder bed -based technologies are amongst the most successful Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques. "Selective laser sintering/melting" (SLS/SLM) and "binder jetting 3D printing" (3DP) especially are leading AM technologies for metals and polymers, thanks to their high productivity and scalability. In this context, the "layerwise slurry deposition" (LSD) has been developed as a layer deposition method which enables the use of SLS/SLM and 3DP technologies for advanced ceramic materials. LSD consists in the layer-by-layer deposition of a ceramic slurry by means of a doctor blade. Each layer is deposited and dried to achieve a highly packed powder layer, which can be used for SLM or for 3DP. This technique offers high flexibility in the ceramic feedstock used, especially concerning material and particle size, and is capable of producing parts with physical and mechanical properties comparable to traditionally shaped parts. In this presentation, the LSD technique will be introduced and several examples of application to porcelain, SiC and alumina products will be reported.
In powder bed Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, a part is produced by depositing and piling up thin powder layers. In each layer, the cross section of the object to build is defined by locally consolidating the powder, by sintering/melting the material (powder bed fusion technologies) or by ink jetting a binder (binder jetting technologies).
These are already leading AM technologies for metals and polymers, thanks to their high productivity and scalability. The application of these techniques to most ceramics has been challenging so far, because of the challenges related to the deposition of homogeneous powder layers when using fine powders.
In this context, the "layerwise slurry deposition" (LSD) has been developed as a layer deposition method which enables the use of SLS/SLM and 3DP technologies for advanced ceramic materials. LSD consists in the layer-by-layer deposition of a ceramic slurry by means of a doctor blade. Each layer is deposited and dried to achieve a highly packed powder layer. The LSD offers high flexibility in the ceramic feedstock used, especially concerning material and particle size, and enables the production of parts with physical and mechanical properties comparable to pressed or slip-casted parts. In this presentation, the LSD technique will be introduced and several examples of application to porcelain, SiC and alumina products will be reported.
Influence of the dispersant on the parts quality in slurry-based binder jetting of SiC ceramics
(2022)
Binder jetting is establishing more and more in the ceramic industry to produce large complex shaped parts. A parameter with a great impact on the quality of the parts is the binder–powder interaction. The use of ceramic slurries as feedstock for this process, such as in the layerwise slurry deposition–print technology, allows a great flexibility in the composition. Such slurries are typically composed of ceramic powder, water, and small amounts of various additives. The understanding of the effect of these components on the printing quality is thus essential for the feedstock development. Four models were developed regarding the impact of additives, such as dispersants on printing. These models were confirmed or rebutted by experiments performed for an SiC slurry system with two different concentrations of a dispersant and a commercial phenolic resin used as a binder. It is shown that for this system the influence of the dispersant on the curing behavior and the clogging of the pores by dispersant can be neglected. The redispersion of the dispersant after the curing of the resin has no or only a minor effect. However, the wetting behavior determined by the surface energies of the system seem to be most crucial. In case the surface energy of the slurry additive is significantly lower than the surface energy of the binder, the strength of the green parts and the printing quality will be low. This was shown by inverse gas chromatography, contact angle measurement, rheological characterization, and mechanical tests with casted samples.
Regarding feedstocks for the additive manufacturing (AM) of ceramics, two features are most critical in classical powder based AM processes: a high particle packing density (typically >50% TD) must be achieved with very fine particles (typically submicron) in order to ensure sufficient sintering activity. Three innovative approaches will be introduced to overcome this problem:
1. Layer wise slurry deposition: The use of water based ceramic slurries as feedstock for the additive manufacture of ceramics has many advantages which are not fully exploit yet. In the layerwise slurry deposition (LSD) process a slurry with no or low organic content is repetitively spread as thin layers on each other by means of a doctor blade. During the deposition, the ceramic particles settle on the previously deposited and dried material to form thin layers with a high packing density (55-60%). The LSD therefore shares aspects both of tape casting and slip casting. The LSD differentiates from the classical powder-based AM layer deposition, which typically achieves with a flowable coarse grained powder a low packing density (35-50%) only, consequently hindering the ability of sintering ceramic parts to full density. The LSD is coupled with the principles of selective laser sintering (SLS) or binder jetting, to generate novel processes which take advantage of the possibility of achieving a highly dense powder-bed.
2. Laser induced slip casting: Contrary to the LSD process, which requires drying of each individual layer, the direct interaction of ceramic slurries with intense laser radiation, for the laser induced slip casting (LIS), is a promising approach for the additive manufacture of voluminous parts.
3. Gas flow assisted powder deposition: By the application of a vacuum pump a gas flow is realized throughout the powder bed. This gas flow stabilizes the powder bed and results into an enhanced flowability and packing density of the powder during layer deposition.
The presentation will provide a detailed discussion of potentialities and issues connected to the mentioned technologies and will describe the most recent developments in their application to technical ceramics.
Powder bed technologies are amongst the most successful Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques. Powder bed fusion and binder jetting especially are leading AM technologies for metals and polymers, thanks to their high productivity and scalability. The application of these techniques to most ceramics has been difficult so far, because of the challenges related to the deposition of homogeneous powder layers when using fine powders. In this context, the “layerwise slurry deposition” (LSD) has been developed as a layer deposition method which enables the use of powder bed AM technologies also for advanced ceramic materials. The layerwise slurry deposition consists of the layer-by-layer deposition of a ceramic slurry by means of a doctor blade, in which the slurry is deposited and dried to achieve a highly packed powder layer. This offers high flexibility in the ceramic feedstock used, especially concerning material and particle size. The LSD technology can be combined with binder jetting to develop the so-called “LSDprint” process for the additive manufacturing of ceramics. The LSDprint technology combines the high-speed printing of binder jetting with the possibility of producing a variety of high-quality ceramics with properties comparable to those achieved by traditional processing. In this presentation, the LSD process will be introduced and several examples of application ranging from silicate to high-performance ceramics will be shown. Recent developments towards the scale-up and industrialization of this process will be discussed, alongside future perspectives for the multi-material additive manufacturing.