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Additive manufacturing (AM) is a technology which has the potential not only to change the way of conventional industrial manufacturing processes, adding material instead of subtracting, but also to create entirely new production and business strategies. Since about three decades, AM technologies have been used to fabricate prototypes or models mostly from polymeric or metallic materials. Recently, products have been introduced into the market that cannot be produced in another way than additively. Ceramic materials are, however, not easy to process by AM technologies, as their processing requirements (in terms of feedstock and/or sintering) are very challenging. On the other hand, it can be expected that AM technologies, once successful, will have an extraordinary impact on the industrial production of ceramic components and, moreover, will open for ceramics new uses and new markets.
Selective laser sintering of ceramic powders is a promising technique for the additive manufacturing of complex- and delicate-shaped ceramic parts. Most techniques have in common that the powder to be sintered is spread to a thin layer as a dry powder by means of a roller or shaker system. These layers have a relatively low density. On the other hand, appreciable densities can be reached with the use of ceramic slurries as the starting material. Therefore, the layer-wise slurry deposition (LSD) process has been developed. Layer stacks, i.e. powder beds, built up by employing the LSD technology exhibit a density comparable to ceramic powder compacts processed by means of conventional forming technologies. Writing the layer information with a focused laser beam in these dense ceramic powder compacts enables the manufacture of ceramic bodies with a high density and precision in contour.
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.