Fabrication of Ceramic Parts Using a Digital Light Projection System and Tape Casting

In this paper, fabrication of ceramic parts using projection-based stereolithography by curing the mixture of ceramic and photopolymers was investigated. A stereolithography device with a UV LED projection light source was built. A series of resin and ceramic powders, including alumina and zirconia, were experimented to explore the viscosity of mixture and the resultant part quality. It was found that commercial photopolymers are not suitable for this purpose due to the small cure depth. A customized photopolymer without photoinhibitor and optimized photoinitator has demonstrated success in producing 3D ceramic green bodies. It was found that the viscosity was very high for all of the mixtures with high ceramic loading which will influence the recoating process. Therefore, tape casting was used to apply the slurry during the build process.