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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Phys.org [phys.org]:

Ceramics are typically excellent electrical and heat insulators that are hard, strong, biocompatible and robust when faced with many chemicals and temperatures. These unique properties mean ceramics could help improve quality of living, save energy, reduce wear and increase the lifetime of components in many different applications. However, these qualities also make it likely that deformations and cracks occur at some stage during the 3-D printing process—usually, because of stresses within the material.

Although increasingly mainstream for other materials, AM [Additive Manufacturing] is not well understood for ceramics. Until now, it has mostly been used to produce low volumes of very detailed objects smaller than a few cm. Bigger objects run a high risk of cracking.

Westbeek created a model of the physical processes inside the 3-D printer, to help improve understanding of 3-D printing of ceramics and make it possible to print larger objects. AM of ceramics is a two-step process: first, very thin layers of a mixture of ceramic powder and a binder are laid down, hardened by UV light between each layer. This creates the final shape of the object. Second, the object is heated in an oven to remove the binder—much like baking a clay sculpture.

The hardening phase is where stresses can typically crack the ceramic structure.

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