Lithoz goes global with the Ceramic 3D Factory

For years, ceramic additive manufacturing was limited largely to rapid prototyping and R&D applications. As the technology and materials have evolved thanks to industry leaders like Lithoz, production applications have become viable, with particular interest from the aerospace, medical and dental industries. Still, the technology has remained relatively niche due to hurdles like accessibility. All that is now changing, as the technology and market for ceramic AM continues to mature and global production services and networks take shape.

Austrian company Lithoz recently launched the Ceramic 3D Factory, which aims to make ceramic additive manufacturing more scalable and accessible through a global network of service bureaus using Lithoz’s Lithography-based Ceramic Manufacturing (LCM) technology. Notably, this international network for ceramic AM is focused on fulfilling serial production applications to meet growing demand from industrial end users for high-quality technical ceramic parts.

The Ceramic 3D Factory brings together Lithoz’s ceramic AM solutions—including CeraFab 3D printers, premium materials and its new CeraControl software—with professional manufacturing service bureaus based all over the world, such as North America, Europe and Asia. The pioneering ceramic AM production offering will play a key role in scaling up industrial applications for the technology, including the production of aerospace, semiconductor and medical devices. Importantly, it will also help to bring this industry-leading ceramic AM technology to a wider number of end-users.

The technology at the center of the Ceramic 3D Factory

Lithoz is a forerunner in ceramic AM, having developed a proprietary process called Lithography-based Ceramic Manufacturing (LCM). This process, first developed by Lithoz founders at TU Vienna in 2006, is a DLP-based technology that has been tailored to print ceramic-filled resins, like alumina, zirconia, silicon nitride, and tricalcium phosphate. The printing process results in a green part, which subsequently undergoes debinding and sintering post-processing to produce fully dense, high-resolution ceramic components.

Lithoz today has a range of LCM-based solutions on the market, including its flagship printer, the industrial CeraFab System S65; the new CeraFab System S320 for mid-sized parts; the CeraFab System S25 for superior microstructures; the budget-friendly CeraFab Lab L30; and the CeraFab Multi 2M30, a multi-material platform capable of combining ceramics and metals in a single part. The CeraFab System family is powered by Lithoz’s CeraControl, a database-driven software designed to manage a global 3D printing machine park of up to 100 interconnected CeraFab S65 3D printers.

Lithoz recently introduced CeraControl, which is vital to the Ceramic 3D Factory. To put into perspective the production volumes that can be achieved using 100 connected ceramic 3D printers, Lithoz explains that in the case of a 12 mm aerospike nozzle, the part could “be manufactured with exact reproducibility at a printing speed of 3:46 minutes per part, resulting in an annual total volume of almost 14 million parts.”

Service partnerships around the globe

Lithoz has built a number of relationships and partnerships with AM service providers to establish a global manufacturing network that can meet the production needs of its clients. This growing network currently has multiple production partners in the United States, Germany and Japan.

In the U.S., one of Lithoz’s partners includes SiNAPTIC Technologies, a Colorado-based contract manufacturer specialized in the 3D printing of technical ceramics. SiNAPTIC aims to advance applications in industries like aerospace, defense, medtech, semiconductors and more. The partnership was formalized in 2023, when SiNAPTIC purchased seven CeraFab S65 Medical 3D printers for its facility in Lafayette, CO. Lithoz says: “As a close partner of Lithoz, SiNAPTIC makes up one part of the large global network bringing The Ceramic 3D Factory to life.”

In Europe, three Germany-based service bureaus now provide access to Lithoz’s ceramic 3D printing technology through the Ceramic 3D Factory: Bosch Advanced Ceramics, Steinbach AG and CADdent.

Steinbach AG has already demonstrated how Lithoz’s ceramic AM platform is well suited to scalable production volumes: in 2017, the company scaled LCM technology to industrial volumes and manufactured 12,000 units per year of a component for the Da Vinci surgical robot. The part was a small tube with high-precision features like sharp bends and inner contours. The part also had to have ultra-smooth surfaces (with roughness values of Ramax 0.4 µm) to facilitate the passing of optical fibers, as well as minimum wall thicknesses of 200 µm.

Bosch Advanced Ceramics purchased its first Lithoz printer in 2014 and today has a machine park that includes four Lithoz LCM printers. With its years of expertise, Bosch Advanced Ceramics is active in the serial production of highly intricate ceramic parts for various industries, including medtech. In recent years, the company has made progress in the miniaturization of functional parts, exemplified when it managed to print 444 needles on a single build platform. This project, with its clear objective to maximize the loading of a CeraFab S65 platform filled with identical complex parts with fine structures, was a real achievement in serial production using ceramic AM.

In both cases, ceramic 3D printing was the only production method capable of making both the complex design of the parts and achieving the desired surface smoothness.

CADdent, for its part, obtained its first CeraFab System S65 Medical in 2022, and the company has already earmarked space at its facility for ten machines (to be purchased gradually according to the company’s growth plan). The German manufacturer is primarily using its ceramic AM system for R&D and rapid prototyping, but specifies that it has already worked with customers from all industrial fields on testing the ceramic AM process for specific applications. As Lithoz puts it, CADdent will “serve as a high-performance partner for applied research in the future,” thus fulfilling another pivotal role in the Ceramic 3D Factory network.

Most recently, Lithoz partnered with a group of established manufacturers to bring scalable ceramic AM to the Japanese market. The Japan-based LCM technology pool includes major players like AS ONE, Mitsui Kinzoku and Yugyōkuen Ceramics, all of whom have chosen to work with Lithoz’s ceramic AM technology to drive adoption of AM in the Japanese market. AS ONE, Mitsui Kinzoku and Yugyōkuen Ceramics are all offering Lithoz’s LCM know-how through their specific services, making the technology more accessible to Japan-based customers.

“It is fantastic to see commitment to investment in the Japanese 3D printing market,” said Lithoz CEO Dr. Johannes Homa. “We see such potential there and building such a strong network of leading companies will surely lead to great achievements for the additive manufacturing world! We thank our partners in Japan for trusting us with this important goal.”

Ultimately Lithoz’s collaboration with these service bureaus will help to bring its ceramic AM technology to a wider user base and take it to the next level in terms of industrial-scale, series production volumes—all at a competitive cost.

This article was originally published in VoxelMatters’ VM Focus AM Services eBook. Read or download the full eBook for free at this link.