Direct manufacture of ceramic micro components with layered manufacturing methods

摘要

Layered manufacturing has mainly been used for prototype manufacturing in product development. Direct manufacturing of small components is very favourable due to the scaling effect. The number of components that could be manufactured in one batch grows by the square if the size of the parts is reduced to half. The ceramic material used is yttrium-stabilised zirconium. The structural information is printed by ink jet in powder layers of only 80μm thickness. The actual part creation is done in a subsequent heat treatment process where a development process takes place. This is an advantage as the machine speed could be increased considerably compared to other layer manufacturing principles. The parts manufactured are impregnated with epoxy and the material properties are comparable or better than injection molded parts. The other option is sintering of the parts to full density. The sintering process has been studied and the shrinkage and material properties evaluated. A cost analysis has been performed comparing direct manufacturing of small batches of components to plastic moulding-injection.