Additive Manufacturing of Ceramic Components on the Leap to Industrial Use

Dear Colleagues,

Ceramic additive manufacturing (AM) is something different to the AM of polymers or metals because the printed components are still in a green, unfinished state and need a subsequent sintering step to attain their final material properties, as known from conventional powder-technological shaping methods for ceramics. In the recent past, a wide variety of direct and indirect processes with dot-wise, line-wise or layer-wise deposition of the material have been developed for the AM of ceramics, including hard metals, cermets and sintered glasses. Some of these processes have already reached a productive level and are in industrial use. Granules, suspensions, filaments or feedstocks are often used as semi-finished products for the additive building processes, which are subject to special requirements in terms of processability and reproducibility. The current main objectives of development are to achieve the component properties of additively manufactured components at a level comparable to conventional shaping methods and to increase reliability and repeatability. Non-destructive in-line testing methods and surface finishing steps will be indispensable for achieving these goals in the future.

Contributions that address current developments in the additive manufacturing of ceramics along the whole processing chain, focusing on component design, AM building processes, debinding, consolidation/sintering, post-treatment, and characterization, are welcome.

Dr. Tassilo Moritz
Guest Editor

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