Deep drawing of ceramic green tapes - A promising technology for producing new lightweight non-planar kiln furniture

For the processing of ceramic green tapes to form 3D components, different technologies are known, for instance lamination to multilayer or folding. In the metal and plastic industry, deep drawing is after bending one of the famous method for reshaping of sheet metals and polymers. However, for processing green tapes this technology is not used because of the following debinding and sintering steps. During the complex shaping process, the within the polymer matrix arranged ceramic particles become rearrange and an inhomogeneous particle distribution can arise. During sintering this can result in defect because of inhomogeneous shrinkage behavior. This study presents basic investigations of the deep drawing of ceramic green tapes. A special method was developed to investigate the particle distribution within the green tapes before and after the deep drawing and to correlate the results with the process conditions and the location of the investigated volume. One possible application could be as pre-product of non-planar kiln furniture. In combination with extruded pre-products, lamination, and co-sintering big components with a low density and thermal mass can be produced which have a top surface geometry similar to the sintering products.