3D Printing Composite Ceramics with FDM and

Sintering
3dprint.com/224170/3d-printing-composite-ceramics

September 5, 2018

Additive manufacturing has rapidly become more

advanced than it used to be, moving far beyond the days
when components could only be 3D printed out of a
single plastic or metal material. Now other materials,
such as ceramics, can be 3D printed as well. Ceramics
3D printing has progressed quickly in the past few years,
and ceramic materials with different properties can now
be combined. A paper entitled “Hybridization of
Materials and Processes by Additive Manufacturing”
takes a look at the 3D printing of ceramics with different
colors or pore structures, and even ceramics with
stainless steel added. Left: pure zirconia; middle:
zirconia/metal composite; right:
In the study, the researchers chose two feedstock-based pure metal
3D printing methods for combining either porous and
dense ceramic components, black and white zirconia or stainless steel and zirconia. For
the first method, FFF 3D printing, a dual-nozzle 3D printer was used; the first print head
was loaded with zirconia filament and the second was loaded with a 17-4PH stainless
steel filament. The same parameters were used to print both materials, though the print
head temperatures differed slightly.

Cuboid samples were 3D printed, alternating the

materials every two or three layers. The samples were
then debinded and sintered, leading to dense, well-
bonded parts.

In another procedure, the researchers used thermoplastic

3D printing, which combines the advantages of FFF,
robocasting and inkjet printing, using a dropwise
deposition of a viscous thermoplastic material for
building a ceramic component. This method has a
number of advantages, including the following:

There are almost no restrictions concerning the

applied powder material, because the consolidation
of the droplets occurs by increasing the viscosity during cooling

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 Composite or multi-material objects can be printed by using two or more printing
heads
By using a pure thermoplastic binder in one print head, support structures can be
built up in parallel to the component
Completely dense ceramic components can be produced thanks to the high packing
density in the green component
Small droplets enable a high resolution in critical volumes
Precise deposition of small droplets can be combined with fast jetting of molten
suspensions

For their experiments the researchers prepared zirconia suspensions using nanoscale
zirconia powder. To produce black and white components, another suspension was
prepared using a TZ-Black powder. As a binder system, a mixture of paraffin and
beeswax was used.

“The binder system and a dispersing agent were heated up to 100 °C and homogenized for
30 min in a heatable dissolver,” the researchers explain. “Then powder and if necessary
pore forming agents (PFA) like polysaccharide were added and the suspensions were
homogenized by stirring for 2 h at 100 °C.”

The samples were printed, debinded and

sintered. After sintering, nearly dense and
porous volumes were combined in one
component. To illustrate the different
porosities, the samples were placed in front
of a light, with the more porous sections
appearing darker. Both approaches, FFF
and thermoplastic 3D printing, allowed the researchers to create components with
varied properties, whether that be material, porosity or color.

Authors of the paper include Tassilo Moritz, Uwe Scheithauer, Steven Weingarten,
Johannes Abel, Robert Johne, Alexander Michaelis, Stefan Hampel and Santiago Cano
Cano.

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Tagged with: 3d printed ceramics • ceramic 3d printing • Composite 3d printing •

composite materials • composites

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