Ceramic 3D printing on the CeraMet 1.
The UK’s Manufacturing Technology Centre is set to expand its ceramics 3D printing capabilities with the addition of a new ceramic stereolithography system from Photocentric.
Installation of the CeraMet 1 machine is already underway at the MTC, home to the National Centre for AM (NCAM), which plans to use machine to explore 3D printing of large ceramic parts such as full-size casting cores. The CeraMet 1 is the second ceramics-based additive manufacturing system to be brought into the MTC following the addition of an XJet Carmel 1400 machine back in October.
Will Rowlands, ceramic AM technology lead at NCAM, said: “The introduction of the CeraMet 1 at the MTC goes a long way to enhancing the MTC’s capability to support the UK ceramic manufacturing market. This is an exciting new avenue for the cost-effective manufacture of high quality, complex ceramic components, opening up this technology to a huge range of applications."
The CeraMet 1 was developed by Photocentric, a UK-based specialist in photopolymer technology and materials, which has been manufacturing LCD-based polymer 3D printers since 2014. This system is said to benefit from the company’s research intro 3D printing ceramics and a patent-applied-for dispensing and release system known as "blow peel”, which has resulted in a machine that can build ceramic objects of a large scale with high productivity. Photocentric will also be supplying its ceramic resins to the MTC of which there are said to be a vast number of material options available.
Paul Holt, managing director at Photocentric Ltd added: “We are very excited to launch CeraMet 1 as our first large format ceramic 3D-printer. We are thrilled by the opportunity of custom mass manufacturing ceramic parts that this new machine will unleash. We believe that our partnership with the MTC will open up new horizons for the adoption of ceramics additive manufacturing in large scale across industries."
Emphasising the technology's ability to scale, earlier this year Photocentric provided TCT with a behind the scenes look at its Magna 3D print farm, consisting of around 36 large-format polymer LC Magna printers, built to manufacture 7 million face shields for the NHS in the fight against COVID-19.
