Intellectual Property Office

Non-Confidential Disclosures

“3-D Printing Rapid Manufacture of Near Net Shape Ceramic Materials”

PSU Inv. Disc. No 3343

Keywords

Rapid Prototyping, Silicon Carbide

Inventors:

Tom Briselden, David Forsman, Thomas M. Reilly

Links:

http://www.ipo.psu.edu
http://www.erie.psu.edu/academic/engineering/faculty/tdb10/index.htm

Background:

Ceramics are generally very useful materials due to their desirable properties. For example, silicon carbide (SiC) has high thermal conductivity, high strength, semi conducting ability, and hardness value close to that of diamond. Products made at lease partly of SiC include armor, heat exchangers, furnace parts, brakes, bearings, turbine components, and abrasives among many others. A major disadvantage of SiC products is that their standard methods of manufacture (e.g. chemical vapor deposition, chemical vapor infiltration, sintering, and hot pressing) tend to be time consuming, costly, and/or require expensive starting materials. Typical manufacturing methods require lengthy furnace processes with temperatures in excess of 2000 degrees Centigrade. Other ceramics have similar disadvantages.

Invention description:

The present invention describes a unique method of making low cost, complex 3-D ceramic (e.g. silicon carbide) and metal matrix composites that are near net shape. The method provides a way of quickly creating preforms that have high thermal shock, high thermal conductivity, excellent wear resistance, and sufficient strength to allow handling during secondary operations such as thermal processing to 100% density. The invention directly takes the design produced within a 3-D drawing and converts it directly into a ceramic perform via a 3-D printing machine using low-cost powder materials. This method allows for a variety of different parts and configurations to be made in a single process without the need for intermediate production tooling as in existing methods. Figure 1 shows a heat exchanger made by this method.

Advantages:

• Method is applicable to a wide variety of 3-D printing machine
  
• Provides performs with sufficient strength to allow handling during secondary operations
  
• Provides a means to render ceramic (e.g. SiC) bodies of convoluted, complex geometry in near net shape
  
• Simple shapes such as tubes, cylinders, discs, and helical spirals have all been successfully prototyped
  

Contact:

Bradley A. Swope
Sr. Technology Licensing Officer
Intellectual Property Office
113 Technology Center
The Pennsylvania State Univ.
University Park, PA 16802-7000
Phone: (814) 863-5987
Fax: (814) 865-3591
E-mail:bradswope@psu.edu