Aerospace Ceramic Cores: SLA 3D Printing for Complex Internal Cavities

Facing challenges

Aerospace engine turbine blades require complex internal cooling channels to enhance high-temperature resistance. Traditional manufacturing relies on precision wax injection molding, involving metal mold fabrication, wax injection, shell building, dewaxing, and metal pouring. This process is labor-intensive, takes 4-6 weeks, and struggles with demolding intricate internal cavities. Metal molds cost 50-100 ten thousand yuan, making small-batch production prohibitively expensive. Complex features like helical channels and lattice structures cannot be demolded. Design changes necessitate retooling, incurring repair costs of 20-50 ten thousand yuan, resulting in long development cycles and high risks.

Solutions

Shuzao Tech's 3DCR series ceramic SLA 3D printers use stereolithography to directly form ceramic cores without tooling, delivering finished parts in 2 weeks. Using alumina slurry (Al₂O₃ ≥ 85%), a layer thickness of 0.05mm ensures high precision on complex curved surfaces. After debinding and sintering, the parts achieve ≥96% density, withstand temperatures up to 1600°C, and offer a flexural strength of ≥380MPa. The technology supports integrated molding of complex internal cavities without part ejection, with dimensional accuracy of ±0.1mm to meet aerospace casting tolerances and surface roughness of Ra ≤ 1.6μm to minimize post-processing.

Achieve Results

Aero-engine high-pressure turbine blade project: Development cycle reduced from 6 weeks to 10 days; unit cost dropped from 5000 CNY to 1800 CNY (64% reduction). Complex spiral flow channels formed in a single step with 100% internal quality pass rate for cast blades. Over 500+ units delivered at scale with zero failures. Saved over 80 10,000 CNY in mold costs. Product design iterations shortened from 6 weeks to 3 days, completing 5 rounds of optimization.

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