LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Light‐Based Printing of Leachable Salt Molds for Facile Shaping of Complex Structures

Photo from wikipedia

3D printing is a powerful manufacturing technology for shaping materials into complex structures. While the palette of printable materials continues to expand, the rheological and chemical requisites for printing are… Click to show full abstract

3D printing is a powerful manufacturing technology for shaping materials into complex structures. While the palette of printable materials continues to expand, the rheological and chemical requisites for printing are not always easy to fulfill. Here, a universal manufacturing platform is reported for shaping materials into intricate geometries without the need for their printability, but instead using light‐based printed salt structures as leachable molds. The salt structures are printed using photocurable resins loaded with NaCl particles. The printing, debinding, and sintering steps involved in the process are systematically investigated to identify ink formulations enabling the preparation of crack‐free salt templates. The experiments reveal that the formation of a load‐bearing network of salt particles is essential to prevent cracking of the mold during the process. By infiltrating the sintered salt molds and leaching the template in water, complex‐shaped architectures are created from diverse compositions such as biomedical silicone, chocolate, light metals, degradable elastomers, and fiber composites, thus demonstrating the universal, cost‐effective, and sustainable nature of this new manufacturing platform.

Keywords: light based; complex structures; printing leachable; salt molds; salt; based printing

Journal Title: Advanced Materials
Year Published: 2022

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.