Fabrication and characterisation of ceramics via low-cost DLP 3D printing

Abstract

A stereolithography-based additive manufacturing technique has been used for the fabrication of advanced ceramics. A customised 3D printer using a Digital Light Processing (DLP) projector as UV source has been built to fabricate green bodies from photosensitive resins loaded with 25–60 wt% of alumina, 3- and 8-YSZ. The 3D-printed bodies were then sintered in the 1200–1500 °C and exhibited thermal stability. As expected, higher ceramic loadings rendered objects with higher density for a given sintering temperature. The limit of solid loading in the resin is approximately 60% and beyond those contents, the extra ceramic appears as powder loosely adhered to the sintered objects. Photogrammetry was used to evaluate the accuracy of the 3D printing process and highlighted a marked deviation between the CAD model and the resulting object, particularly in the top part of the specimens, possibly due to the use of volatile solvents which cause changes in the photoresins used. Nevertheless, that problem may be overcome by thermostatising the printer vat and/or using solvents with higher boiling point. The results obtained suggest the potential application of low cost DLP 3D printing techniques to process ceramics for a number of applications including ceramic fuel cells, piezoelectrics, dental applications, etc.

Keywords

• Ceramics
• DLP 3D printing
• Photopolymerisation
• Photogrammetry
• Green body