On October 12, 2019, Lithoz, an Austrian ceramic 3D printing expert, and Corning (Corning), an American multinational special materials company, established a cooperation and achieved new results. Lithoz ’s proprietary light-cured ceramic manufacturing (LCM) technology has recently achieved 3D printing of Corning glass ceramic materials. Readers who are often concerned about mobile phone products should know Corning better, because many smartphone screens use Corning's Gorilla Glass.
This experiment expands Lithoz's ceramic 3D printers with new materials that can be used in tough, biocompatible, superconductor and other fields.
Corning glass ceramics
Glass ceramics originated in the 1950s and have excellent mechanical toughness, high resistance to radiation and chemical damage, and piezoelectric and photoelectric effects. It is used commercially to manufacture housings for radar antennas, dental implants, electric cooktops and other hot kitchen utensils.
Corning is the inventor of glass ceramic materials and currently has three different brand products:
–Processable MACOR®,
– RF transparent PYROCERAM® glass code 9606, it also has high strength and thermal conductivity, and has a low dielectric constant,
– Corning glass ceramics with a low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) have better thermal shock resistance.
Ceramic manufacturing based on light curing
Lithoz LCM 3D printing technology was developed by the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) in 2006. It uses photocurable materials dispersed with ceramic particles to 3D print parts. After layer-by-layer photopolymerization and curing, the green body is taken out from the 3D printer for post-processing, and then sintered to form dense ceramic parts.
When using Corning glass ceramics to produce 3D printed parts, the same process is used. First, Corning powder and Lithoz's resin are mixed into a slurry, and then the slurry is used for 3D printing, sintering, and annealing. The company reported that “a high-resolution glass-ceramic part that meets Corning ’s performance specifications” has been achieved, including a sintered density of 2.69 – 2.7 g / cm3, biaxial bending strength of 152 – 172 MPa, and thermal At 25 ° C) it is 2.25 W / m · K.
A series of Lithoz systems and material combinations will be exhibited in Formnext 2019, Hall 11.1, booth D32.
This year, Antarctic Bear will also attend the Formnext 3D printing exhibition in Germany, which will bring you the most cutting-edge international reports.