Ceramic Additive Manufacturing Using VAT Photopolymerization

The popularity of additive manufacturing for producing porous bio-ceramics using vat photopolymerization in the recent years has gained a lot of impetus due to its high resolution and low surface roughness. In this study, a commercial vat polymerization printer (Nobel Superfine, XYZprinting) was used to create green bodies using a ceramic suspension consisting of 10 vol.% of alumina particles in a photopolymerizable resin. Four different sizes of cubical green bodies were printed out. They were subjected to thermal processing which included de-binding to get rid of the polymer and thereafter sintering for joining of the ceramic particles. The porosity percentage of the four different sizes were measured and compared. The lowest porosity was observed in the smallest cubes (5 mm). It was found to be 43.3%. There was an increase in the porosity of the sintered parts for the larger cubes (10, 15 and 20 mm). However, the difference in the porosity among these sizes was not significant and ranged from 61.5% to 65.2%. The compressive testing of the samples showed that the strength of the 5-mm cube was the maximum among all samples and the compressive strength decreased as the size of the samples increased. These ceramic materials of various densities are of great interest for biomedical applications.