Electrophoretic deposition as rapid prototyping method

Electrophoretic deposition is a near-net shaping technique leading to excellent green body properties such as high green density and homogeneous pore size distribution that also affect the features of the sintered sample. It has been used in a wide range of applications from optical to biomedical ones. However, it was used as standardized method so that individually tailored geometries have not been fabricated yet. The present work modifies this promising method so that a rapid prototyping process is possible. First of all, the local application of an electric field was investigated and simulated in order to achieve a structure as fine as possible using commerciallly available coaxial cable. Afterwards, two different ways of fabricating prototype structures with optimized parameters were investigated. The first one was the combination of the developed electrode with a CAM unit. The second one was arranging 16 independent electrodes in a 4 x 4 array in order to parallelize deposition. In all cases, structural integrity as well as height distribution and shape were studied. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.