A review on the ceramic additive manufacturing technologies and availability of equipment and materials

Abstract

Ceramic additive manufacturing allows the fabrication of small series of complex parts without the high costs of molds usually associated with traditional ceramic processing. Although research into ceramic 3D printing by all technologies started back in the 90s, its industrial application is still quite restricted when compared to polymers and metals, which is related to the limited availability and costs of equipment and materials for such applications. This review examined the advantages and limitations of each process (binder jetting, direct ink writing, directed energy deposition, fused deposition, material jetting, selective laser sintering, selective laser melting, and vat photopolymerization), discussing their particularities. It also summarized the commercially available 3D printers and raw materials for ceramic processing, pointing out to trends and challenges of each technology.

An investigation of the financial feasibility and technical differences among Shell Sintering Technology (SST), Subtractive, Casting Manufacturing, and Slurry Vat Photopolymerisation for the fabrication of ceramic dental crowns.

“…This technology is capable of producing things made of considerable amounts of ceramic and metallic material. As a result, this approach is suitable for producing collapsible moulds composed of metal or ceramic that can tolerate high temperatures [13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…Searching for the progress of automation, vat polymerisation AM technologies have been introduced in the dentistry industry. Whereas castable and ceramic slurry were applied for ceramic crown making [9][10][11][12][13].…”

Future directions in ceramic additive manufacturing: Fiber reinforcements and artificial intelligence

“…In fact, alumina is the one composition that has been fabricated via each of the prominent ceramic AM techniques. 4 Nonoxides are of interest for tooling, aerospace, and energy application spaces due to high hardness, temperature, and ablation resistance.…”

“…170 Even with these density challenges, BJT remains a popular AM technique for ceramics, as one of the only with commercially available equipment made for ceramic feedstocks (ExOne, Cometrue, Voxeljet). 4,168 The advantage of PBF is that it's the only technique that requires no post-printing debinding or sintering steps as either a laser (for laser melting, LM, or laser sintering, LS) or electron beam (EBM) is used to melt or sinter the ceramic. LM and LS are most common for ceramics since most ceramics are not electrically conductive and therefore aren't applicable to electron beam melting (EBM).…”

“…1 Since then there have been thousands of publications covering ceramic AM in various techniques and compositions, 2 providing evidence of buy-in from the research community. Even still, limited commercial off-the-shelf equipment exists tailored to ceramic AM 3,4 with few certified parts in service due to the remaining challenges and obstacles to overcome. In this perspective, we will provide some general background on the field that leads to remaining challenges and subsequent proposed focus areas for future directions.…”