JOM, Vol. 68, No.

3, 2016

DOI: 10.1007/s11837-015-1771-3
2016 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society

Process Development of Porcelain Ceramic Material with Binder

Jetting Process for Dental Applications
HADI MIYANAJI,1 SHANSHAN ZHANG,1 AUSTIN LASSELL,1
AMIRALI ZANDINEJAD,2 and LI YANG1,3
1.Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA.
2.Baylor College of Dentistry, Texas A&M University, Dallas, TX 75246, USA. 3.e-mail:
li.yang.1@louisville.edu

Custom ceramic structures possess significant potentials in many applications

such as dentistry and aerospace where extreme environments are present.
Specifically, highly customized geometries with adequate performance are
needed for various dental prostheses applications. This paper demonstrates
the development of process and post-process parameters for a dental porcelain
ceramic material using binder jetting additive manufacturing (AM). Various
process parameters such as binder amount, drying power level, drying time
and powder spread speed were studied experimentally for their effect on
geometrical and mechanical characteristics of green parts. In addition, the
effects of sintering and printing parameters on the qualities of the densified
ceramic structures were also investigated experimentally. The results provide
insights into the processproperty relationships for the binder jetting AM
process, and some of the challenges of the process that need to be further
characterized for the successful adoption of the binder jetting technology in
high quality ceramic fabrications are discussed.

INTRODUCTION
Ceramic materials have been traditionally difficult to manufacture due to their unique combinations of attributes including high melting
temperature, high coefficient of thermal expansion,
low toughness and high hardness.13 On the other
hand, due to their outstanding performance in
various extreme environments, ceramic materials
hold promising potentials in applications such as
aerospace, automobiles and biomedicine. One area
in which ceramic materials have been extensively
used is dentistry, in which ceramics are used for
crowns, inlays, onlays, bridgeworks, dentures and
veneers due to their close mimicry of natural teeth
materials.46 In these applications, it is often
required that the ceramic structures possess satisfactory combinations of color, strength, opacity,
durability and accuracy, which poses a challenge
for the manufacturing processes. Current manufacturing techniques for many ceramic dental prostheses structures either lack sufficient quality control
due to the inability to deal with complex geometries,
or require extensive labor-intensive processes.79

(Published online January 5, 2016)

Due to the highly customized nature of the dental

prostheses geometries, it becomes a logical choice to
explore additive manufacturing (AM) technologies
as potential alternatives for the freeform fabrication
of high-quality ceramics.
Various AM such as material extrusion, stereolithography, laser sintering and direct write have
been used for ceramic dental structure fabrication
with varying success.1014 These processes can be
roughly classified into two categories: (1) separate
steps for geometrical shaping and property forming;
and (2) an integrated process for both geometrical
shaping and property forming. With integrated
processes such as laser powder bed melting, currently the approach still faces various challenges,
e.g., the difficulty of performing direct sintering of
ceramic powder and the existence of thermal residual stress-induced cracks.15,16 On the other hand,
although the multi-step process approach often
results in increased fabrication time and costs, it
takes advantage of the extensive knowledge base of
traditional ceramic manufacturing techniques such
as sintering and slip casting, therefore posing less
technical challenges for application development.

831

832

Although multi-step process approach is potentially

subject to more manufacturability limitations, it
currently allows significantly easier control of geometrical accuracies and material properties, which
are critical to many applications such as dental
prostheses.
This research focuses on the use of binder jetting
AM processes for the fabrication of dental porcelain
materials. Binder jetting processes use binder
droplets to selectively bond powder materials into
3D green bodies, which are consequently infiltrated
or sintered to achieve mechanical strength. Taking
the multi-step process approach, binder jetting
fabrication of ceramics is subject to various restrictions common to traditional powder metallurgy such
as fatigue strength issue, surface finish issue and
sintering-induced thermal distortions. On the other
hand, due to its exceptional compatibility with
almost all ceramic materials and similarity with
traditional manufacturing routes, binder jetting
possesses promising potentials in ceramic dental
prostheses applications. However, despite its relatively straightforward concept, the physics of binder
jetting process is rather complex. It has been
suggested that the accuracy and strength of binder
jetting printed parts are affected by different factors
including powder materials used, binder, nominal
dimensions, parts orientation, location of the parts
in the print bed, geometric features and their
topology, e.g., open or closed contours, and postprocessing.17 These parameters in turn related to
various physical and chemical processes that take
place during the printing, such as the droplet
formation on nozzles,18 powder bed flow,19 powderbinder reactions20,21 and binder curing.22 Due
to the difficulty to accurately simulate the entire
process, currently most literature on binder jetting
processes are heavily focused on experimentallybased studies.19,23,24 In general, very limited literature is available which systematically investigates
the effect of process parameters on various characteristics of both the green bodies and the final parts.
Despite the extensive early works performed by
MIT and other institutes, there appears to be a
knowledge gap between practical knowledge with
individual binder jetting systems and the fundamental printing principles.
In this research, a systematic experimentallybased study was carried out to establish the relationship between various process parameters of the
ExOne M-Lab binder jetting system and the qualities of the green parts and finished parts, which in
turn provides insights into the fundamental principles of the process. Due to the limited options of
dental material supply, one specific dental porcelain
powder material was used in this study, while
investigations focused on other parameters including binder amount, drying time, drying power,
powder spread speed and sintering schemes. The
effect of layer thickness was not investigated due to
the existence of previous works.2529 The results of

Miyanaji, Zhang, Lassell, Zandinejad, and Yang

this study can be used as a preliminary guideline for

adjusting the printing parameters for new material
development and the better understanding of the
binder jetting processes.
METHODOLOGY
The material used in this study is IPS InLine
Dentin powder (Ivoclar Vivadent, Liechtenstein),
which is a commercial product for artificial dental
restorations such as crowns, veneers and onlays.
The chemical composition of IPS InLine Dentin
powder provided by the manufacturer is shown in
Table I.
The as-received powder exhibits significant
agglomeration, which makes it difficult to spread
uniformly in the printing process. From the SEM
microscopy, the porcelain particles have irregular
shapes and different sizes ranging from 10 lm to
30 lm (Fig. 1a). It is well known that the irregular
morphology and large particle size distribution
range significantly reduces the powder flowability.30
Therefore, in order to improve the flowability of the
powder, a flow agent was added to the porcelain
powder. The function of the flow agent is believed to
be analogous to the addition of sand between two
surfaces, which serves as low friction contact media
and therefore reduces the resistance of relative
motions between the powder particles. The flow
agent chosen was Aerosil R 972 Hydrophobic fumed
silica powder (COSMOS Plastic & Chemicals), with
an average particle size of 16 nm. This powder is
composed of 99.8% fumed silica after being treated
with dimethyldichlorosilane (DDS) based on a
hydrophilic fumed silica with a specific surface area
of 130 m2/g (Aerosil R 972 MSDS). Up to 10%
volume percentage flow agent was added to the
original porcelain powder and manually mixed, and
therefore was expected to have minimum impact on
the chemical composition and properties of the
original powder. The addition of flow agent reduced
the aggregation, which resulted in the shift of mean
aggregation size from 25 lm to 19 lm as shown in
Fig. 1b.
The study was divided into two parts. In the first
part, investigations focused on the green part
printing study, while in the second part, investigations focused on sintering strategies. This was
considered valid with the arguments that there
exist little interaction between these two steps for
the parameters investigated in this study. For
example, with a proper burn-out schedule the
binder amount should have minimum impact on
the final density and porosity of the parts, while
linear shrinkage during the sintering should be
consistent in the same directions. This simplification assumption is reasonable when the binder
amount is limited within a proper range, e.g., when
the binder does not saturate all the voids between
the powder particles in the printed areas. Internal
studies with several dental structures also validated

Process Development of Porcelain Ceramic Material with Binder Jetting Process for Dental
Applications

833

Table I. Technical data of IPS InLine dentin powder

SiO2: 59.565.5, Al2O3: 13.018.0, K2O: 10.014.0,
Na2O: 4.08.0, Other oxides: 0.04.0, Pigments 0.02.0

Standard composition (in wt.%)

Fig. 1. Dental porcelain powder.30 (a) SEM. (b) Particle size distribution after adding agent.

this assumption (not presented here) and therefore

allows for a rather straightforward experimental
design.
Green Part Printing
Four adjustable process parameters used in the
ExOne system which were considered for the study
are defined as follows:


Saturation level Defined as the amount of the

binder which is deposited through the printhead.
It is determined by calculating the theoretical
percentage of void space (Vair) in the print
material that is filled with binder (Vbinder) following Eqs. 1 and 2, in which PR is the packing
density of the powder bed and Venvelope the
volume of a defined envelope. It is worth mentioning that packing density specifies how much
void space exists in the print material after
spreading. For the dental porcelain which was
used for this study, the packing density was 40%.
Desired saturation level V binder =V air
V air 1 

PR
 V envelope
100

1
2

Power level Defined as the intensity of applied

heat using an infrared heater. Without further
knowledge about the absolute powder values,
relative level values were used.
Drying time Defined as the amount of time
considered for drying (curing) of the deposited
binder.

Spread speed Defined as the rate at which the

powder roller moves to spread the powder.

Table II shows the parameters and their levels of

variation which were considered for this research.
The range of variation for each parameter was
selected based upon the results of the preliminary
studies conducted by the authors. The results of
these researches provided the settings for the levels
of each parameter.19,23,25
A full factorial experimental design with a total of
36 experiments were conducted. Six cubic specimens with the size of 10 mm 9 10 mm 9 10 mm
were printed out under different combinations of
factors levels. It is well known that the orientation
of the specimens in the building chamber strongly
affects the final mechanical properties of the specimens. Therefore, all specimens were fabricated in
the same orientation to provide similar experimental conditions. The fabricated green parts were
further cured in a drying oven at 200C for 2.5 h
following standard procedures indicated by the
OEM. Figure 2 shows the samples after curing,
printed with a saturation level of 75%, power level
of 45%, drying time of 30 s, and spread speed of
2 mm/s.
After the cured green parts were cleaned, their
dimensions were measured using a digital caliper
with 0.01 mm resolution, and their strength was
evaluated through compressive testing performed
on a Shimadzu micro-tensile testing machine as
illustrated in Fig. 3. ANOVA was performed for the
results in order to analyze the significance of input
parameters.

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Miyanaji, Zhang, Lassell, Zandinejad, and Yang

Table II. Factors and levels of the experiment

Factors
Levels

Saturation level (%)

Power level (%)

Drying time (s)

Spread speed (mm/s)

50, 75

45, 60, 75

30, 45, 60

2, 6

Fig. 4. Sintering schedule for dental porcelain green parts.

Fig. 2. Printed parts after curing.

Fig. 3. Micro-compression testing.

In addition, after conducting the accuracy and

strength tests, the remaining green parts were
sintered using the same sintering schedule optimized through the sintering study (described in
detail below). The shrinkage and densities of the
sintered parts were measured via the caliper and
Archimedes method in order to verify whether there
is any effect of the printing parameters on the
properties of the final parts.
Sintering
A general sintering schedule for dental porcelain
ceramic is shown in Fig. 4. The sintering process
started at room temperature, and was heated at a

set rate to 500C for half an hour (phase I), which

aimed at burning out the binder completely. After
the burn-out step, the part continued to be heated to
the target sintering temperature and subsequently
held for a set amount of time (phase II), and then
cooled at 10C/min to room temperature. It is well
known that the sintering temperature, holding time
and heating rate could potentially have significant
effects of the shrinkage, microstructure and distortion of the final parts. Therefore, these parameters
were all investigated in this study. For this purpose,
identical parts were fabricated using process
parameters of 50% saturation level, 75% power
level, 6 mm/s spread speed, and 60 s drying time.
The experimental design is shown in Table III, and
the levels of each variable were determined by
referring to the standard sintering schedules used
in dental clinics for dental porcelain.
Due to time constraints, full experimental design
was not performed, and the selected combinations of
the temperature, holding time and heating rate
parameters listed in Table III were investigated in
an empirical manner. A preliminary temperature
study was carried out with 10 min holding time and
100C/h heating rate, and the temperatures that
resulted in significant sintering without apparent
melting were selected for further investigation.
Then, various holding times were investigated with
these selected temperature levels and 100C/h heating rate. Finally, the heating rate was investigated
with the selected combination of temperature and
holding time based on the results from the previous
investigations. The density of the samples were
determined by the Archimedes method, and the
dimensions of the samples were measured with care
taken to account for sample distortions.

Process Development of Porcelain Ceramic Material with Binder Jetting Process for Dental
Applications

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Table III. Factors and variables of the experiment

Factors

Levels

Temperature
Holding time
Heating rate

750C, 800C, 850C, 900C, 925C, 950C

Instantaneous (1 min), 10 min, 30 min, 2 h, 10 h
100C/h, 500C/h, 5000C/h

Fig. 5. Effect of factors and their interaction on green part accuracy in the Z direction.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Green Parts Printing
Accuracy in the Z Direction
Figure 5 shows the effects of the different printing parameters and their interactions on the accuracy of the printed parts in the Z direction
(perpendicular to the build plate). Based on
ANOVA, power level, spread speed and drying time
have significant effects on part accuracy, while the
effect of the power level is more significant than
other factors. Excessively high heating power cured
the deposited binder before it could completely

permeate through the desired printing area, whilst

with insufficient heating power some binder
remained insufficiently cured, leading to layers
displacement due to the shear forces resulting from
spreading the successive layers, which consequently
results in macro-distortion of the parts. Moreover,
from Fig. 5 it is noticeable that increasing the
saturation level does not appear to have significant
effects on the accuracy of the parts when considered
alone. Under regular processing condition,s the
binder permeates faster in the lateral directions
than in the vertical directions due to the existence of
the previously printed layer that potentially acts as

836

a barrier. Therefore, higher binder amount might

only lead to increased dimensional errors in lateral
directions. On the other hand, saturation level
interactions with other factors exhibit different
trends. For instance, saturation level interaction
with power intensity or spread speed significantly
affects the accuracy in the Z direction. It was also
shown that there exist optimum combinations for
power level and drying time, which is intuitive as
their interaction would reasonably indicate the total
degree of binder curing during the process.
From the results, powder spread speed appears to
have a less significant effect compared to other
process parameters. Lower spread speed is always
desired for uniform powder spreading and therefore
the quality of the printed parts; however, it could
significantly increase the printing time. As a general role, finer particles require a relatively slower
spread speed, whereas a relatively higher spread
speed could be set for coarse particles.21
Accuracy in the X Direction
From the experiments, it was found that the
geometrical accuracies of the X direction exhibit
similar characteristics to the Y direction under
various printing parameters, therefore only the
results from the X direction are discussed. Figure 6
shows the effects of different parameters and their
interactions on the accuracy of the printed parts in
the X direction. As expected, the increase of saturation level has a more significant effect on the part
accuracy in the X direction. However, it appears
that the effect of powder spread speed is less
significant. Comparison between the results of
accuracy in Z and X directions shows that spread
speed and power level factors differently affect the
accuracy in both directions. In order to obtain a
better accuracy in the Z direction, the spread speed
should be decreased. However, in order to reach the
optimal accuracy in the X direction, the spread
speed should be higher. Although the same high
power level would reduce binder permeation in the
X and Y directions after deposition and consequently increase accuracy, due to over-curing of
the binder and a weak bond between successive
layers, the part accuracy in the Z direction would
decrease.
It was noticed that for all the samples the
measured dimensions were larger than the designed
dimensions (10 mm). While the resolution of the
binder droplet deposition is around 0.06 mm, the
dimensional error could be contributed to by several
factors. Firstly, as the binder spreads when it is
applied to the powder surface, if no dimensional
compensation is undertaken, the binder droplet is
going to be deposited on the contour locations of the
printed area, which results in potentially significant
errors after binder spread. Secondly, since the
powder used for this study is highly irregular, it
could also contribute to excessive binder spreading

Miyanaji, Zhang, Lassell, Zandinejad, and Yang

in lateral directions. Thirdly, due to the concern

with the relatively weak strength of some samples,
the measurement with the caliper might introduce
additional errors. This also highlighted the difficulty with the characterization of these green part
structures, and an improved measurement method
might be adopted in the future.
In addition, it was also observed that for some
samples significant macro-distortion occurred, as
shown in Fig. 7. This phenomenon occurs when the
power level or drying time is not sufficient to cure
the binder sufficiently. In this case, printing successive layers on top of under-cured binder would
decrease the accuracy in the bottom section of the
part more than the top layers (which are printed
later in the process) probably due to the gradually
accumulated weight from the top layers (gravitational forces).
Green Part Strength
Green part strength is relevant due to the fact
that it is required for the successful manipulation of
the green parts, and is also needed in order to
determine the proper cleaning processes. The process parameters and their interactions have different trends of effects on green part strength as
compared to dimensional accuracies, as shown in
Fig. 8, in which it is shown that increasing the
saturation level from 50% to 75% would increase the
part strength by 50%. This indicates that a higher
amount of binder would wet the powder particles
more efficiently, therefore creating better bonding
between the particles and between layers. Furthermore, the green part strength significantly
decreases with increasing spread speed and drying
time. As mentioned earlier, increasing the spread
speed would decrease the powder uniformity and
packing density of the spread powder, which will
likely affect the part strength in the green state.
Also, more drying time over-cures the binder before
spreading the next layer resulting in a weak
interface bond between layers and less efficient
wetting between the powder particles, which consequently results in less strong green parts. Therefore, there appears to exist a trade-off between
choosing the drying time for bonding within a layer
versus bonding between layers. A longer drying
time might lead to higher binder curing that is
desirable for accuracy and strength within a layer,
but would reduce the bonding capability of the
powder to the next layer, which results in delamination defects and weaker part strength.31
Moreover, although increasing the power level
from 45% to 60% increases the strength from 55 N
to 95 N (73% increase), further increasing from 60%
to 75% decreases the green part strength by 58%,
which again could be attributed to the total degree
of curing that occurred during the process. It must
be noted that through further analysis it was found
that the interaction of the ower level and drying

Process Development of Porcelain Ceramic Material with Binder Jetting Process for Dental
Applications

837

Fig. 6. Effect of factors and their interaction on green part accuracy in X direction.

time also affects the green part strength in a rather

complicated way, which could be potentially
explained by further studies of the curing characteristics of the binder.
The optimal process parameters for accuracy and
for green part strength can be determined from
ANOVA analysis. It must be noted, however, that
these parameters are highly dependent on the
specific combinations of material, binder and setup.
When a new material is developed, a complete set of
experimental designs is currently needed to establish process guidelines.
Sintering
Linear Shrinkage

Fig. 7. General shape of the parts after printing.

Effect of Heating Temperature Figure 9 shows the

linear shrinkage of the samples sintered at different
temperatures for 1 min and 30 min. As the sintering temperature increases, the linear shrinkage in
lateral directions on the top surface of the sintered
parts shows an ascending trend until 850C, and
then remains largely constant at about 25%.

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Miyanaji, Zhang, Lassell, Zandinejad, and Yang

Fig. 8. Effect of different factors and their interaction on green part strength.

Fig. 9. Linear shrinkage of structure at different temperatures. (a) 1 min. (b) 30 min.

However, the curve of the linear shrinkage in

lateral directions at the bottom surface shows an
obvious decrease after a small peak of linear
shrinkage at 850C. It could be speculated that at
elevated temperature the softened structures might
partially collapse under their own gravity due to the

loss of strength. This also explains the shrinkage

phenomenon in the vertical direction (Z direction),
which shows an on-going ascending trend as the
temperature increases with the maximum value up
to 32% (at 950C). On the other hand, when the
temperature increases to the level of 900C, the

Process Development of Porcelain Ceramic Material with Binder Jetting Process for Dental
Applications

839

Fig. 10. Linear shrinkage of structures at different holding times. (a) 850C. (b) 900C.

adopted. On the other hand, when process robustness is needed, then a less efficient but less sensitive
process route may be adopted.

Fig. 11. Linear shrinkage of structures at different heating rates.

sintered bodies show apparent signs of melting and

requires a short sintering time in order to maintain
the shape. At even higher temperatures, the specimens start to lose their cubic shape due to melting.
Effect of Holding Time For the group sintered at
850C, the linear shrinkage shows a slight increasing
trend with longer sintering time until the holding
time reaches 2 h, and the linear shrinkage starts to
decrease on the top surface of the lateral directions
with a longer holding time (Fig. 10a). The linear
shrinkage at the bottom of the lateral directions also
has the same trend except that the maximum
appears at the holding time of 30 min. On the other
hand, the linear shrinkage in the Z direction exhibits
more or less constant linear shrinkage. The decrease
of linear shrinkage under prolonged sintering may be
explained by the known fact that in the later stage of
sintering the coalescence of pores could lead to
potential distortion of the samples. When sintered
at 900C, as shown in Fig. 10b, excessive sintering
became apparent after 1 min, as partial melting and
part distortion became obvious.
The different sensitivities to holding time at
different temperature levels possess practical values. For processes with highly accurate temperature cycle control, a more rapid sintering can be

Effect of Heating Rate The heating rate experiments were performed at 900C for 1 min, and the
results of the linear shrinkage are shown in Fig. 11.
The linear shrinkage in all directions shows the
same trend as the heating rate changes from 100C/
h to 5000C/h. Generally, the Z direction has a
larger shrinkage than the lateral directions, and the
top portions also exhibit higher shrinkages than the
bottom portions. This might be partly contributed
by the specific layout of the sintering heat source
during the experiment.
For a very rapid heating rate (5000C/h), smaller
linear shrinkage could be expected due to the
insufficient sintering. On the other hand, at a very
slow heating rate (100C/h), the samples were in
fact subject to prolonged holding time at high
temperature ranges, which might effectively cause
gravity-induced distortion and over-sintering distortion as discussed above.
Porosity
As can be expected from traditional sintering
theories, with the increase of sintering temperature
or sintering times, the porosity of the final part
tends to reduce, as can be seen from Fig. 12. The
trend with porosity is also in general agreement
with the linear shrinkage observed at these conditions. Comparing Fig. 12a and b, it appears that the
lowest achievable porosity with the dental porcelain
is about 5.56.5%. Therefore, with higher sintering
temperature, the target porosities can be achieved
much faster, as illustrated by the case of 900C
sintering temperature (1 min). It must be noted that
the accuracy of the experimental setup for the
porosity measurement may be limited, and therefore might contribute to the increase of porosity at
higher temperature levels.

840

Miyanaji, Zhang, Lassell, Zandinejad, and Yang

Fig. 12. Post-sintering porosities of samples under different sintering conditions. (a) Different temperatures. (b) Different holding times.

Effect of Printing Process on Final Part

Qualities
Linear Shrinkage
Through experiments, it was found that only
spread speed and its interaction with saturation
level have significant effects on the linear shrinkage
of the parts after sintering using the green parts as
reference geometries. Higher spread speed will
increase the shrinkage and therefore decrease the
part accuracy after sintering, which is likely to be
contributed by the decrease of packing density and
uniformity of the spread powder as explained. Also,
at higher binder saturation levels, the spread speed
does not appear to have as significant an effect,
which might be explained by the compact effect
from surface tension-driven hydrodynamic clumping created by excessive amount of liquid.
Moreover, although power level is not a significant factor for linear shrinkage within the experimented parameter ranges, it exhibits the same
trend as spread speed. In other words, increasing
power level would result in higher shrinkage particularly in the lateral directions. As explained
previously, increasing heating power would result
in more rapid curing and reduced time for the
powder particle to re-orient under the hydrodynamic forces of the binders, which results in higher
overall porosity and consequently higher shrinkage
during the sintering.32
Porosity
ANOVA analysis reveals that, within the defined
confidence interval, spread speed and power level
are two significant factors affecting the porosity of
the sintered parts. Increasing the levels of these two
process parameters would significantly reduce the
porosities of the sintered parts. Furthermore, it was
also found that, at higher saturation, increasing
spread speed or drying power leads to denser parts.
As higher saturation level and high drying power

drive two opposite binderpowder interaction mechanisms, it appears that optimum combinations can
be determined by carefully characterizing each
mechanism, which need to be further investigated
in future work.
CONCLUSION
In this study, a comprehensive experimental
investigation was carried out to evaluate the effect
of various printing parameters (binder amount,
drying power level, drying time, powder spread
speed) and sintering schedule (temperature, holding
time, heating rate) on the qualities of dental porcelain ceramic parts fabricated via the binder jetting
process. It was found that various printing parameters could significantly influence the geometrical
quality of the green parts, which could in turn affect
the geometrical accuracies of the final parts after
sintering. In addition, through the experimental
parameter search, optimized printing parameters
and sintering schedules that are suitable for different application cases were found for the dental
porcelain ceramic materials.
More importantly, this study provided insights
into various characteristics of the binder jetting
process. The rather complex process principles
driven by the binderpowder interaction and binder
curing have not been adequately studied, and in
order to successfully utilize this process for future
applications, extensive future work is needed. Also,
it becomes apparent that, with the current dental
porcelain material feedstock as well as the lack of
understanding of the process, it would be difficult
for the binder jetting to achieve the minimum
geometrical accuracy requirement of 0.1 mm for
dental prostheses applications.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful of the support from
Rapid Prototyping Center (RPC) at University of
Louisville and ExOne Co. Ltd.

Process Development of Porcelain Ceramic Material with Binder Jetting Process for Dental
Applications

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