Study on direct fabrication of ceramic shell mold with slurry-based ceramic laser fusion and ceramic laser sintering

Abstract

Through studying the porosity of the ceramic parts fabricated with slurry-based rapid prototyping process of ceramic laser fusion and ceramic laser sintering, the feasibility of directly fabricating ceramic shell mold was investigated in this paper. Although the total porosity of the fusion part was low, microcracks led to low strength, which was hardly enhanced by post-treatment of infiltration. On the other hand, by adjusting the slurry formulation and varying the laser scanning energy, the open porosity of the sintered part was over 90 vol.% of the total porosity. High open porosity resulted in good permeability, which is one of the important characteristics of the ceramic shell mold for investment casting. To verify the feasibility of producing casting part with ceramic shell molds fabricated by the processes of ceramic laser fusion and ceramic laser sintering, the casting process was conducted to obtain the casting parts.