Ceramic prototypes with "Ceramic Injection Molding" (CIM)

Ceramics are a fascinating group of materials. In particular, technical ceramics (also called high performance ceramics), are clearly superior to all other technical materials in many areas. These usually include hardness, temperature resistance, electrical insulation, and, abrasion and wear resistance. Recently, ceramics are also increasingly used for applications that require a high degree of biocompatibility, such as implants.

The most common technical ceramics processed by injection molding are

• Alumina (Al2O3)
• Zirconia (ZrO2)
• Mixed oxide ceramics

Ceramics in additive manufacturing

The additive manufacturing of various ceramics has made great progress in recent years. Ceramic filaments can already be used to produce everyday objects such as tableware relatively efficiently. However, this process is likely to result in major losses in terms of surface quality and dimensional errors from the CAD model.

Binder-based Stereolithography processes are also gaining ground. However, the costs for individual prototypes are still enormously high. In addition, the control of the binder distribution is a major problem, which can lead to unevenly filled components and to a loss of dimensional accuracy both before and during sintering.

«Additive Tooling» for fast CIM prototypes

Injex' injection molding tools manufactured by 3D printing are also very well suited for the production of CIM components. For small components up to about matchbox size, injection molding with Injex is the cheapest and fastest manufacturing process for technical ceramics.