Rapid and high-accuracy forming of ceramic parts by DLP technology based on optimization of shear stress

Stereolithography technology shows great potential for manufacturing ceramic parts with complex structures. However, it seems difficult to achieve both high forming accuracy and speed. Excess cured areas caused by light scattering is one of the main reasons for the degradation of accuracy. This paper presents a special strategy to remove the excess cured areas by utilizing the shear stress that is generated during the forming process. By adjusting the feeding speed, feeding height, feeding temperature and their combinations, the shear stress can be controlled to be beneficial. The relative forming error greatly decreased by 51.66% for small features. As the feeding speed was increased to 3 or 4 times, the forming accuracy of the structures on different surfaces was increased to 9 times or 2.8 times. This work provides a simple, general and low-cost method for rapid and high-accuracy manufacturing of ceramic parts, especially for those with small structural features.