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This year’s AM Ceramics once again brought a wide number of experts and innovators to Vienna for an engaging two days of talks and networking. Leading ceramic researchers shed light on the latest developments in ceramic 3D printing and shared exclusive insights into their research. With 2023 marking the first year of media sponsors for AM Ceramics in the form of PIM International and TCT Magazine, we couldn’t wait to welcome visitors back to the year’s top conference for ceramic 3D printing!
Over two days, participants took part in inspiring lectures and discussions right in the heart of European 3D printing hotspot Vienna, while a dinner hosted in the iconic Ottakringer Brauerei was the perfect opportunity for motivating catch-ups and informal networking. With a range of fields being covered, from industrial mass production and multi-material 3D printing through to medical and dental applications, AM Ceramics 2023 proved to be a success for the entire ceramic 3D printing field.
Day 1
The first day started off with a selection of workshops at the Lithoz GmbH headquarters. Led by experts from the Lithoz team, visitors had a choice of five complementary workshops covering multi-material 3D printing, medical applications, serial production via Lithography-based Ceramic Manufacturing (LCM) technology, the latest developments in Laser-based Slipcasting (LIS) and finally general applications and uses for ceramic 3D printing. Thanks to the limited group sizes, participants had the exclusive chance to see Lithoz machines and parts up close and in-action, as well as the opportunity to ask specific questions to leading engineers in the respective fields.
It was then time to head over to the Kleines Haus der Kunst, the venue host of this year’s event, where lunch was waiting. After a warm welcome from Dr. Johannes Homa, (CEO Lithoz GmbH), AM Ceramics 2023 officially kicked off with Prof. Dr. Jérôme Chevalier (INSA Lyon) as moderator.
Industrial Applications
Day one started with industrial applications using ceramic 3D printing as a first session. Dr. Mirna Bechelany (Safran Tech) opened by describing the additive manufacturing of ceramic components and how it is offering a specific and tailor-made solution for more fuel-efficient engines and aerodynamic designs in aircraft. By using Ceramic Matrix Composites, fuel can be conserved due to the lightweight and heat-resistant nature of ceramics. 3D printing can significantly increase the feasible geometric complexity of such components, making the rapid and cost-effective manufacture of more efficient parts possible.
Dr. Steffen Walter (Alumina Systems) and Stephan Wege (plasway-Technology) then shared their insights into using ceramic additive manufacturing to produce durable and large components for harsh plasma environments. Thanks to the resistant properties of ceramics, these parts can withstand extreme and active plasma atmospheres over a longer amount of time compared to conventional materials.
Liron Edelstein (Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.) gave a presentation on the qualification of additively manufactured ceramic components for aerospace applications. When it comes to these applications, the repeatability and reproducibility of components is key to meet the extremely high-quality standards required by the industry. Rafael carried out a project to develop and test AM ceramic parts to ensure they consistently achieve the high standards without needing tests for every run. After successfully proving this method, additive manufacturing was then implemented for the serial production of 3D-printed aerospace applications.
Hendrick Holling (Access e.V.) then closed the first session by investigating 3D-printed ceramics for the investment casting of hybrid-electric propulsion components. Thanks to the time-saving and economical advantages of additive manufacturing, this technology poses a real opportunity to manufacture investment casting prototypes. However, ceramic 3D printing is still in its early stages for such applications due to the danger of printed ceramics melting during the casting process. After investigating the reactivity of three different ceramic systems with four common alloys used in aviation applications, one particular printing process was proven to perform exceptionally well. This method ultimately enabled the tool-free production of prototypes and reduced the overall process time by 50%.
Medical and Dental Insights
The first day then continued with medical and dental insights as the focus of the second session. Dr. Alexey Unkovskiy (Charité Berlin) started off with a deep dive into using additive manufacturing for minimally invasive applications in prosthetic dentistry. Lithium disilicate (LS2) was discussed for its uniquely advantageous ceramic properties in the dental field, such as translucency, strength and fracture toughness. LS2 is typically processed using the milling of blocks or blanks, which consumes a lot of material and limits freedom of design. By combining AM with LS2, high resolutions and precisions can be achieved, while parts show exceptional optical properties and comparable mechanical properties and bioresorbability as those of conventionally produced LS2 parts.
Hugh Roberts (SiNAPTIC) then continued with a talk covering additively manufactured silicon nitride implants. As a material, silicon nitride is extremely advantageous in medical applications due to its bacterial resistance, rapid bone integration and patient-specific design capabilities. By integrating ceramic additive manufacturing process, highly complex structures made of silicon nitride can be produced which are lightweight, strong and promote osteointegration.
Frank Reinauer (KLS Martin Group) rounded off the medical and dental session with an exciting first look at KLS Martin’s research into tailored and patient-specific ceramic implants. The company’s progress and improvement of the materials and 3D printing technologies over the years were examined, with results then being presented about optimising implant topology for enhanced properties and performance. Finally, an outlook was given on the future developments of 3D-printed ceramic implants and how they could revolutionise medicine in coming years.
With the session of day one officially concluded, participants headed over to the impressive surroundings of the Ottakringer Brauerei for a traditional dinner. Innovators from every industry were brought together and had the chance for some casual chats and promising networking before heading home to prepare for an exciting second day!
Day 2
New Trends & Business Models for AM
The second day of AM Ceramics started off with a session from Prof. Dr. Jürgen Stampfl (TU Wien), who shared his insights into trends, technologies and to dos in additive manufacturing, as well as giving an overview of current state-of-the-art methods and technological challenges faced by manufacturers. In particular, the fields of aerospace and chemical engineering were presented as applications that can truly benefit from the advantages of ceramic AM (such as customisation, design freedom and tool-free production). The use of lithography-based AM was also examined as a technology offering excellent feature resolutions and high throughput.
New Technologies
Dr. Andrea Zocca (BAM) then kicked off the ‘New Technologies’ session with a talk comparing Layerwise Slurry Deposition (LSD-Print) and Laser-Induced Slipcasting (LIS) for printing advanced ceramic parts. LSD-Print, which is a modified binder jetting-based process, combines high-speed printing with a range of high-quality ceramics and achieves comparable properties to parts printing using traditional methods. On the other hand, LIS technology employs a laser-based process and water-based feedstocks. The process can be directly integrated into conventional ceramic process chains to produce green bodies which require no debinding. The advantages and drawbacks of each workflow were evaluated to outline their uses in targeted applications.
Dr. Frederic Kotz-Helmer (Glassomer) spoke about the 3D printing and injection moulding of transparent fused silica glass, which is an important manufacturing material thanks to its high chemical and thermal stability, optical transparency, hardness and outstanding surface properties. By developing new processes for the shaping of fused silica glass, Glassomer has enabled the 3D printing of parts which achieve identical chemical and physical properties after sintering and debinding as commercially fused silica glass parts.
Finally, Dr. -Ing. Uwe Scheithauer (Fraunhofer IKTS) discussed the validation of the CharAM test methodology in two round robin tests. Additive manufacturing, while presenting innovative opportunities and solutions for producing functional and complex components, also poses new challenges – for example, in terms of considering AM-specific design properties. Using the specifically developed CharAM characterization method, the effort needed to characterize large numbers of test specimens has been significantly reduced. This method was examined in greater detail with its methodology being further optimized and ultimately validated via the cooperation of six different partners, including IKTS.
Material Progress
The next session - all about progress in AM materials - began with AM Ceramics moderator Prof. Dr. Jérôme Chevalier (INSA Lyon) sharing the latest developments in achieving strong and tough 3D-printed ceramics. Using additive manufacturing, more complex and customised shapes can now be manufactured with less material consumption – however, strength is a common property that needs optimisation. Paste rheology plays a major role during the process in obtaining high-strength materials, while certain tough ceramic materials achieve a better defect tolerance. Finally, the accuracy of various additive manufacturing technologies in producing zirconia dental prostheses were compared against subtractive manufacturing processes, with stereolithography coming out on top within the AM group for dental restoration manufacturing.
Brandon Cox (Honeywell FM&T) then spoke about the path to qualifying additively manufactured ceramic parts. While AM has already achieved success in many different applications, innovators must now focus on applications which undergo strict qualification processes to use this technology in critical function components and workflows. Setting standards in ceramic AM was a major point of discussion in advancing the implementation of this technology, with interlaboratory studies currently being held to provide the method feasibility needed to define and achieve these standards. The results and recommendations stemming from these studies were presented to qualify ceramics for further industry acceptance.
Continuing with the session, Dr. Jan Hostaša (Zenit Smart Polycrystals) talked about additively manufactured transparent ceramics, which represent a new generation of R&D materials for optic and photonic applications. By combining these transparent materials with the design freedom and absolute precision of additive manufacturing, parts can be produced with even more impressive mechanical properties and functionalities, such as near-net-shape components with complex structures printed in a single step.
To close out this session, Barry Robinson (The MITRE Corporation) discussed the continued advances in the design and evaluation of additively manufactured piezoelectric metamaterials. Through the cooperation between Lithoz America, the MITRE Corporation and MSI Transducers Corp., novel 3D-printed piezoelectrics have been produced with exceptionally complex designs which are unachievable using conventional forming methods. The results of this cooperative project were presented in terms of feasibility and final property achievements.
AM CeramYcs Award
The final section of this year’s AM Ceramics presented, for the first time, the winners of the AM CeramYcs Award, offering the opportunity to give a talk at the event. The first winner, Anna K. Hofer (Montan Universität Leoben) led an investigation into the rapid sintering of AM ceramic parts for structural applications. Typically, the thermal post processing of 3D-printed ceramic components is both long and energy-consuming, taking between several hours and days. In this talk, the results of a study to rapidly densify 3D-printed parts via a spark plasma sintering set-up were shown. Ultimately, it was proven to be effective in optimising the microstructures of these additively manufactured ceramics within minutes, opening the door to reduced processing times and energy costs for sintering complex ceramic parts.
The second winner of the AM CeramYcs Award was Camille Zoude (INSA Lyon), who presented the direct ink writing of porous geopolymers for thermochemical energy storage. With the growing importance of renewable energy in today’s world, her work investigated the development of porous host material for storing energy. Such a material requires multi-scale porosity, sufficient mechanical strength and resistance to heat exchanges, making geopolymers a perfect candidate. Different production techniques were investigated to adjust the composition of the geopolymers and optimise their porosities, with the 3D printing process shown to modify the internal foam structures via densification.
Marco D’Agostini (University of Padova), as the third winner of the AM CeramYcs Award, discussed near-universal slicing for continuous extrusion Direct Ink Writing (DIW) through differential growth algorithms. Using a novel slicing strategy to exploit differential growth, complex and heavily folded 3D shapes can be produced without the need for discontinuous extrusion. Ultimately, the design flexibility of continuous-extrusion DIW processes was proven to be greatly improved during this study.
AM Ceramics 2024 was concluded with the final winner of the AM CeramYcs Award. Felipe Mello Rigon (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) shared insights into the DIW of filter geometries from capillary suspension-based inks. Using the capillary suspension concept, sintered filters can be manufactured with high open porosities and more homogeneous microstructures when compared to traditional means. By mixing two different ceramic suspensions immediately before extrusion, it is possible to work with suspensions with initial yield strengths lower than 100 Pa and yield points above 4000 Pa after mixing, enabling the printing of more complex structures. The results of this investigation, as well as the evaluation of how mixing methods influence ink rheology and microstructures, were discussed.
With talks having come to an end, there was a final farewell to the participants to round off another engaging year of talks and discussion at AM Ceramics 2023. Thanks to the varied range of industrial, medical and dental experts, the beautiful setting of Vienna and motivated networking between engineers and innovators, this year’s event had fantastic feedback from all sides and was a great success!
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