For a few years it has been very easy to have plastic or metal objects made in 3D printing. On the other hand, until recently it was very complicated or even impossible to find this service to have ceramics made in 3D printing. It was therefore necessary to create an industrial service capable of producing custom-made 3D printed ceramic manufactured objects for all those who have no ceramic knowledge or simply do not want to manufacture ceramics.
Such a service is the prerogative of an industrial company that brings together at least the following characteristics:
• It is dedicated exclusively to 3D printing.
• It has a long and solid ceramic expertise
• It uses several complementary ceramic 3D printing technologies
• It is independent of 3D printer manufacturers
• It makes it possible to produce all “printable” ceramics
Novadditive was created on this concept. It also brings particular importance to the costumers needs and to the framing of their project, a guarantee of the good success of the work to be carried out.
Such a company presents all the industrial parameters necessary for the logic of production management and continuous improvement. In this, it is consistent with the expectations of its scientific and industrial customers.
It has internal control of all stages from part design, 3D printing, debinding, sintering and metrology.
In the production flow, the most critical step is debinding, a common cause of rejected parts. Essential for SLA, FDM and in general all printing technologies with a large proportion of polymers in the raw materials (about 50% by volume), debinding is a long process, a real bottleneck.
Its mastery is linked to knowledge:
• The composition of the polymers
• Properties of ceramic powders
• Processes for operating furnaces (thermal cycle, geometry, atmosphere, etc.)
When all these parameters are mastered, we can push the limits of feasibility. For example, many projects have dimensional requirements. Novadditive manages to obtain dimensional tolerances of the order of +/-0.02mm, sometimes less, while the "standard" given by printer manufacturers is rather +/-0.1 or +/-0.2mm.
The challenges for the custom production of ceramic pieces are numerous. If we have to designate those that seem to us to be priorities, there are:
• The production of large series
• Increased productivity
• Reduction of raw material costs
But there is certainly in the first place a wide popularization of the knowledge of ceramics and the benefits of printing them in 3D, still very often unknown!