Processes
In close cooperation with material development, the production of components made of plastic, ceramic, metal and functional composites is realized using various methods in the area of process development. The focus here is on extending the original process-specific materials to previously unused manufacturing processes or component dimensions.
In the past, for example, plastic injection molding has been very successfully developed in the direction of molding components with precision in the µm range. Through a combined material and process development, powder injection molding was also upgraded for the production of ceramic or metal components with structural details in the µm range. Based on this extensive knowledge, FFF, which was originally developed for 3D printing of plastics, was further developed for the production of dense ceramic and metal components.
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Depending on the method chosen, the combination of new materials with established 3D printing processes "only" requires an extensive and therefore time-consuming adjustment of the 3D printing parameters in the best case. However, it is often necessary to establish a new process chain with several individual process steps, which must be developed and optimized individually, but also in the context of the final component quality.
The following main areas of work are currently being pursued:
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The established replication process of injection molding is being further developed in two directions. On the one hand, components of different sizes (submillimetre to decimetre) and structural details in the one to two-digit µm range are being produced from almost all commercially available thermoplastics following component-specific process parameter optimization. On the other hand, the knowledge gained is transferred to the powder injection molding of ceramic and metallic components. This requires extensive development of new molding compounds in order to obtain dense and dimensionally stable components of different sizes.
Both research directions are accompanied by extensive injection molding simulation in close cooperation with a provider of commercial software to determine suitable molding parameters.
The following main areas of work are currently being pursued: