Ceramic Resin
Consumer-level ceramic printing options include: Resin CeramicHowever, this option may be difficult for most people. Form Labs The company produces a technical ceramic resin, Alumina 4N (Figure I), that can be used exclusively with Form 3+ printers, which also require a compatible build platform and tank. Potential use cases are high-temperature, high-strength, complex engineering parts that are difficult to produce otherwise and can withstand corrosive environments. As always, resin printers are best suited for small parts that require fine features.
At $1,299 per liter, this resin isn’t intended for hobbyist use. (In fact, on Formlabs’ store page for Alumina 4N, you have to check a box acknowledging that you need more equipment and experience before you can add it to your cart.) The resin is mixed with ceramic particles that are obviously a challenge for the technology that irradiates the resin to cure it, and it’s abrasive, too, since SLA printers only perform well if you keep the trays clean and scratch-free. Bottom line: this isn’t for beginner SLA printers.
Additionally, parts printed with this material must be cleaned in a proprietary ceramic cleaning solution, as regular cleaning isopropyl alcohol or water will crack them. The parts must then be thoroughly dried before being fired. Formlabs estimates shrinkage of 22% on the horizontal plane and 26% on the vertical plane. If you’re considering this and own a printer, make sure you read Formlabs’ documentation on the process and printer setup before you begin. And of course, you’ll need to get a kiln that can maintain the required temperature profile.
If you are very experienced, have a compatible Form 3+, and need a technical part that can’t be made with any of the other ceramic techniques we’ve discussed so far, this may be your only 3D printing option.
Do something really big
Now that you’ve progressed from directly printing 50cm tall pieces to more delicate craftsmanship, consider what happens when you try to build something the size of a house. Building adobe or brick homes is perhaps the oldest additive manufacturing technique, but you might be wondering whether ceramic printing techniques can be scaled up to create objects the size of a house.
WASP, the printer company mentioned at the beginning of this article, has developed an experimental 3D printer (Figure J), Build a building Made from locally available materials, they named Gaia (Figure K) Their goal is to Soil, lime, waste fiber They transformed wood from agriculture into building materials, and then they started tackling the challenge of building with other materials, and it will be interesting to see if 3D printing like concrete or clay ultimately wins out in this field.
Conclusion
3D printing ceramics with consumer-level equipment is not only possible, but it’s a vibrant field with a growing number of competitors. We’ve provided a representative sample here, but if you have an application you’d like to try, do a bit more searching to see which of these options is right for you.
From an economic standpoint, if you plan to make a lot of parts and very fine detail isn’t that important, you’re probably better off using a dedicated paste printer. This material is an order of magnitude or two cheaper than filament, and it can make it easier to experiment with your own materials. You’ll need to invest in peripheral equipment like the printer, kiln, and compressed air source.
Filament allows you to get started more cheaply, especially if you already have a suitable printer (with a hardened nozzle) and kiln. The type of filament you use will depend on the exact material you need and what debinding and post-processing you are comfortable with.
Resin ceramic printing is likely to remain in the realm of industrial applications for some time to come, but who knows when something revolutionary will emerge in 3D printing.
And of course, we hope that our friends at WASP are at the forefront of a trend of using local materials to build solid, attractive homes in places where people might live in tin-roofed shacks at best. We look forward to hearing more innovative applications of ceramic 3D printing at all scales in the near future.
This article make: Vol.88.
