Thermal Debinding of Ceramic-Filled Photopolymers

Abstract

Within the large variety of different additive manufacturing technologies stereolithography excels in high precision and surface quality. Using the Digital Light Processing (DLP) Technology a stereolithography-based system was developed, which is specifically designed for the processing of highly filled photopolymers.The powder-filled suspension enables the 3D-fabrication of a so called ceramic green part. In order to get a dense ceramic structure, subsequent thermal processing steps after the 3D-printing process are necessary. First, the polymer-ceramic composites heated up to 400°C. During this processing step, called debinding, the organic components are burned out. The resulting part, consisting of powder particles stabilized by physical interactions, is further heated to sinter the particles together, and the final, fully dense ceramic part is obtained.The debinding step is the most critical process. The used components have different evaporation or decomposition temperatures and behaviors. Thereby a reduction in weight and also in dimension occurs, which depends on the portion and composition of the organic components and especially on the temperature cycle. Furthermore, the physical characteristics of the ceramic powder, such as the particle size and the size distribution influence the debinding behavior. To measure the changes in weight and dimension a thermo-gravimetric (TGA) and a thermo-mechanical analysis (TMA) can be used. To avoid too high internal gas pressures inside the green parts a preferably constant gas evolution rate is seeked. Also the ‘surface-to-volume ratio’ affects the debinding characteristics. Therefore, optimized debinding cycles for specific geometries allow the crack-free debinding of parts with a wall thickness up to 20 mm.