Enabling solidification processes of complex shapes using common Additive Manufacturing technologies: Initial experiences

Oral presentation given in May 2024 at the 2nd International Conference on Engineering Manufacture (Porto, Portugal). Abstract: Building components with complex internal structures is one of the main advantages of Additive Manufacturing (AM) over conventional methods. This work describes a low-cost manufacturing procedure that uses a desktop Fused Filament Fabrication machine and Polylactic Acid (PLA) to obtain a template for the part shape and a solidification dip-casting approach to provide the final dimensions and material properties of ceramic components. In this sense, AM is not the primary manufacturing process but an enabler of a solidification process. A set of grid geometry samples printed in PLA and covered by different layers of zeolite and colloidal silica blends were processed, and the dimensions of the pre-sintered and sintered coatings were estimated using optical methods and image processing. According to the experimental results, coating thickness depends almost proportionally on slurry compositions. Not all the experiments led to undamaged parts after sintering; those pre-printed parts with lower thickness failed after sintering. Additionally, it is noted that the PLA core was removed successfully.