Lionel Vargas-Gonzalez

3D printing (3DP) technologies have transformed the processing of advanced ceramics for small‐scale and custom designs during the past three decades. Simple and complex parts are designed and manufactured using 3DP technologies for structural, piezoelectric, and biomedical applications. Manufacturing simple or complex geometries or one‐of‐a‐kind components without part‐specific tooling saves significant time and creates new applications for advanced ceramic materials. Although development and innovations in 3DP of ceramics are far behind compared with metals or polymers, with the availability of different commercial machines in recent years for 3DP of ceramics, exponential growth is expected in this field in the coming decade. This article details various 3DP technologies for advanced ceramic materials, their advantages and challenges for manufacturing parts for various applications, and perspectives on future directions. We envision this work will be helpful to advanced ceramic researchers in industry and academia who are using different 3DP processes in the coming days.

The goal of this work was to present results of mechanical characterization and ballistic investigation of 3‐D printed alumina (Al ₂ O ₃ )‐based armor plates, manufactured using two additive manufacturing‐based methods: pressurized spray deposition (PSD) and direct ink write (DIW), to determine the maturity of these additive‐based processes against the industry standard process. The DIW plates exhibited superior hardness, flexural strength, and density compared to the PSD plates, and in many respects, even eclipsed some of the properties of the commercial isopressed (IP) material. Plates (90 mm × 90 mm × 8 mm) of these composition were manufactured for ballistic analysis in accordance with established ballistic characterization procedures, using a 50.8‐mm‐thick Aluminum 6061 plate as backing and witness plates in the case of penetration or deformation. Six alumina plates were examined ballisitically (one shot per plate) against the 12.7 mm APM2 projectile (45.9 g) at an impact velocity of 840 m/second. The plates that were manufactured using the DIW method provided a higher impact resistance than the PSD method, however, both did not perform as well as the traditionally processed IP material, due to the presence of defects introduced due to the printing processes.

Cubic boron nitride ( CBN ) is a lightweight (ρ = 3.45 g/cm ³ ) ceramic material that is harder than all materials except diamond. As harder ceramics tend to perform better as armor, this material is of interest to the military community. CBN is synthetically produced and is primarily used as an abrasive and in cutting tool applications. The properties (elastic modulus, strength, toughness, hardness, etc.) and ballistic performance of this material were determined and compared to a commercially available armor‐grade boron carbide (B ₄ C).