Integrally Cored Ceramic Mold Fabricated by Ceramic Stereolithography

Ceramic stereolithography (SLA) was used to fabricate a ceramic investment casting mold with the integral core within a ceramic mold shell, produced in a single patternless construction from refractory-grade fused silica. The SLA build material was a photopolymerizable suspension of 60 vol% fused silica dispersed in a monomer solution based on 1,6-hexanediol diacrylate. The mold had 1047 layers, each 100 mu m thick. Green body dimensions before sintering were approximately 0.7% smaller than the design within the plane of the layers, and approximately 0.3% larger than the design perpendicular to the layers. The sintering shrinkage was 10.7 +/- 0.2% in both directions.