WP17 – FabCeram3D

The ceramics industry is a relevant sector in the national business network, with a wide variety of products that are manufactured for different purposes. Like many other sectors, it is necessary that it renews itself to become more competitive, reducing raw material and energy waste.

To overcome this challenge, the solution involves the development of new direct, digital manufacturing technologies, such as additive manufacturing and other finishing technologies adapted to utility ceramics. This will provide greater production flexibility, enabling the industrial production of geometrically complex components with superior quality, which would be impossible or very time-consuming to execute in a traditional way.

The project aims to develop production systems and adapt raw ceramic materials to implement in, and prepare, the manufacturing processes of the ceramic companies of the future. Currently, production systems for houseware ceramic products are still very much focused on methods from the past century, such as compression molding or slipcasting.

With the advancement of direct, digital manufacturing technologies, in particular additive manufacturing, these systems are being oriented towards mass production of parts/products, rather than just prototypes.

The proposed systems are based on the robot casting concept, with the capacity to extrude two types of material: one for the ceramic product and the other for supports. Currently, there are no functional and effective solutions for the easy separation of the product from the supports, in  cases of additive manufacturing in robot casting. Not producing supports is a common approach to avoid this problem, but that option limits the geometries that can be produced, restricting them to simpler shapes or with smaller wall angles.

Therefore, it is vital to find alternatives that focus on the differentiation and affirmation of ceramic products, increasing quality, design and technological innovation, both in products and processes. These factors, combined with a reduced time-to-market, will have positive impacts on productivity, being decisive for the survival of the industrial sector and for environmental sustainability.