Due to its excellent mechanical and chemical properties, Silicon infiltrated Silicon Carbide (SiSiC) is one of the most important ceramic construction materials. Additive shaping processes can expand the geometric degrees of freedom and thus the technical application possibilities of SiSiC in comparison to conventional manufacturing processes. However, the application of additive SiSiC materials have so far been limited by high cost of ceramic printing processes and the restricted surface quality.
As part of the AMSIC research project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Fraunhofer IKTS has developed a method for using Powder Bed Fusion – Laser Beam (PBF-LB) to manufacture dense ceramic SiSiC with complex geometry. In order to benefit from the significant advantage of a shrinkage-free process, it is necessary to achieve a very high packing density of the SiC particles and to provide an adequate amount of carbon for ending up with a dense microstructure characterized by a high fraction of secondary SiC.

For that reason, the project partner ESK-SiC GmbH has developed spheric SiC grains, exhibiting an increased bulk density as well as an improved flowability. Thus, such powders can be utilized very well in the powder-bed based manufacturing process.
Within this lecture, the developed solution will be presented, how the laser sintering process, well known from plastic printing, can be used for SiSiC and other ceramics. In addition, first application results of a lattice-like porous burner demonstrator, designed and tested by the project partner promeos GmbH will be shown.
The authors like to acknowledge the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for funding (PROMATV-439-022, Grant-No. 03XP0270D).