Lithoz Establishes a Subsidiary in America to Support Ceramics 3D Printing

The products and services offered by Lithoz America are similar to the ones offered at the headquarters in Vienna. However, Lithoz America operates independently on the US market. With its location in Albany, customer requests from North America can be processed in an efficient manner and also a very high level of support is guaranteed.The foundation of Lithoz America offers new possibilities regarding cooperation with established customers based in America. Johannes Homa, CEO of Lithoz, explains: “Due to the local representation we meet the requirements of the American Export Control, which enables us to work together with our American customers on special materials or application development.” Lithoz America also offers collaboration in research projects and consulting services along the entire value chain of the additive manufacturing of high-performance ceramics.Especially in the area of application development, Lithoz is expecting a boost in innovation due to the presence in the American market. Johannes Benedikt, CTO of Lithoz, added: “3D printing of ceramics offers many possibilities in the field of function-oriented design of products. We have noticed that our American customers are exceptionally open to innovation. Lithoz America has set itself the goal of being a strong and competent partner for the development of new applications and materials. With our new US manager Shawn Allan, we have found a very competent and expert partner for this task.”

Shawn Allan has degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Alfred University (B.S., 2002) and Georgia Tech (M.S., 2005). He joins Lithoz America 1 year after founding Allan Materials Inc. He previously worked 11 years with Ceralink Inc, and spent a brief period at Sandia National Laboratories, earning a patent at both organizations. He has worked with teams on a wide array of commercially motivated applied materials processing R&D including ceramic composition and process development. Areas of investigation included forming ceramics from lithography-made molds, epoxy-casting of ceramics, shape preserving metal-ceramic gas displacement reactions, microwave materials processing and sintering, reaction bonded silicon carbide, and radio frequency glass lamination. Shawn has also been active in business operations, technology outreach, safety efforts, and facility management.

Through its foundation, Lithoz is expanding its presence in one of the most important AM markets in the world. The US market represents approximately 1/3 of the world market for high-performance ceramics and covers a number of highly interesting industries and applications. Amongst others, good examples are the aerospace sector (ceramic cast cores for turbine drives) or biomedical applications (implants and instruments).