3D Printing

Ceramics and porcelain as 3D material

Ceramics and porcelain as 3D material

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Porcelain offers particularly elegant 3D models in the field of ceramics

Long gone are the days when 3D prints only resulted in work pieces of a more functional design, and these – at least in the home user area – often also attracted attention due to their rather questionable quality. Even in 2016, most 3D models are still made of plastics such as polyamide (PA) in selective laser sintering or ABS in the FDM process, but this should not hide the fact that these noble design objects from the 3D printer have long since become a matter of course are.

In addition to precious metal 3D printing with gold or silver, this also includes 3D printing with ceramics or even porcelain. In this special process, the 3D model is treated with a special ceramic granules built up in layers and then glazed at a temperature of over 1000°C. Various rapid prototyping technologies can be used, such as stereolithography (=SLA printing) or selective laser sintering (=SLS printing).

Heavy ceramics versus fine ceramics

In general, a distinction is made between coarse ceramics and fine ceramics with regard to grain size, with the limit being at one Grain size of 0.05 mm located. Below this value one speaks of fine ceramics, also known as artistic ceramics, since these ceramics are mainly preferred by artists and designers. Above 0.05 mm one generally speaks of coarse ceramics, which also trades under the designation technical ceramics because of their mainly industrial area of ​​application.

It is noteworthy that the term is not defined in the sense of specific chemical ingredients. It is rather the case that the designation ceramics or “ceramic mass(es)” has become established as a collective term for a large number of inorganic, non-metallic materials with specific properties or colloquially as a generic term for shaped or fired products, such as those used for Components, tools or ornaments are used.

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Porcelain as the noblest form of ceramics

A particularly noble variant of ceramics is porcelain, a material that has fascinated people for centuries and is therefore emphatically referred to as “white gold”. Porcelain consists of a mixture of kaolin (also known as china clay or china clay), feldspar and quartz, whereby the percentages of these 3 components, depending on the place of manufacture, are subject to significant deviations. German porcelain consists mainly of kaolin (55% of Bavarian crockery, Meissen hard porcelain as much as 66-67%), while East Asian porcelain is dominated by quartz (41-45%).

Ceramics as a 3D Material - 3D ActivationA 3D printed ceramic faceVery different printing processes are used in the 3D printing of ceramics or porcelain. Technical ceramics are always printed using the stereolithography process, while porcelain is usually printed using a process similar to 3DP printing (i.e. 3D printing with powder and binding agent).

The areas of application of porcelain 3D printing include, in addition to art and design, primarily household goods, especially fine crockery.

The fields of application of ceramic 3D printing are much broader and also include, for example, medical technology, casting molds or product samples.

Get to know the fascinating world of 3D printing with ceramics and numerous other materials by visiting our website. There you will also find a lot of information about our printing processes and services.

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