Q&A: Bosch Advanced Ceramics on its play in the 3D printing industry

Two years ago, at the last in-person Formnext, the more observant visitors and exhibitors will have noticed Bosch branding above a stand, not something you see at every 3D printing trade fair. The company was promoting its internal startup incubator, grow, which comprises ten young businesses looking to bring new solutions and services to artificial intelligence, property management systems, industrial additive manufacturing, and advanced ceramics. Last month, the multinational engineering firm was back, this time pushing one start-up in particular to the forefront.

Bosch Advanced Ceramics is a company five years in the making. There are 13 core team members harnessing ceramics injection moulding and pressing for the series production of parts; machining and laser processing to ensure high-precision; and also 3D printing technology from Lithoz and 3DCeram.

TCT dropped by the company's stand to speak with Iris Heibel [IH], Sales and Product Manager, and Nikolai Sauer [NS], Engineering & Additive Manufacturing.

TCT: First, can you explain the motivation for setting up Bosch Advanced Ceramics?

IH: In 2006, there was a decision in the plant and they decided to add to their facility ceramic injection moulding equipment due to the fact that they have already a metal injection moulding and polymer injection moulding. And so, they wanted to have the whole material [range] available. Since then, they started to produce technical ceramics at this site, which is just dedicated to automotive industry. And so it was growing and growing [in automotive], but at a certain time, we started to have projects for the consumer goods business and that was the first bigger quantity they produced with this ceramic injection moulding equipment. If you have new projects, you have to do first always samples and the sampling in ceramic injection moulding is quite expensive.

So, in 2014, they decided that they want to have a 3D printer for ceramics. They bought Lithoz equipment and then they started to get some experience with this printer. So in 2016, as we have been just at the automotive plant, it was always difficult to get some investments and so three employees of this plant decided to create a startup and that was then at Grow platform GmbH.

That was the beginning and then Nikolai joined, he's dedicated just for the 3D printing department, and we have others for ceramic injection moulding. And, as it developed quite nicely, we got more and more inquiries and so on, and then we decided in 2018 to have a second printer and now, we do much better than at that time. So we are growing and growing. Then last year, we change our name to Bosch Advanced Ceramics, just a name, we are still in Grow platform GmbH, it's still a corporate startup of Bosch. So still 100% under Bosch logo and we have now more employees, we get more new printers and business is increasing.

NS: We started with additive manufacturing for sampling of ceramic injection moulding, but we had to get bigger, to get series production in additive manufacturing. But at the beginning, we need to do a lot of process development and from 2017 ongoing, we develop the process furthermore, and now we're also having series projects.

TCT: What are the advantages and opportunities that Bosch Advanced Ceramics sees with 3D printing?

IH: So we can be quicker, it's flexible, we can easily change the design of parts, and then get some additional features and so on, so it's quick. What else?

NS: With the conventional ceramic injection moulding, for example, and other conventional technologies, a lot of geometries weren't really able to be produced. And now we have the possibility to do these kinds of geometries that hadn't been possible before.

TCT: What do you perceive to be the pros and cons of ceramic 3D printing at the moment? What does it do well and what would you like to see improved?

NS: With the Lithoz technology, we can produce very fine structures, very small wall thickness, high precision, the surface roughness is extremely good. But we're limited in the scalability. So, on the one side, the building platform size is not that big, it's suitable for most of the parts that we're printing, but if we scale up even bigger, thinking about big series production, there needs some development there. But therefore, we're not only working with Lithoz printers, we're also working with 3DCeram. And, yeah, I think this is just another technology possible for production.

TCT: What are the key industries you are printing parts for and what are the typical components you are producing?

NS: We're in very different markets. One of the markets for additive manufacturing that we're in is healthcare. We're working a lot there in additive manufacturing, because they have high complex parts, most of the parts are very small, and they have high demand on material properties and so on. So this is, for additive manufacturing, a big market. Also electronics, small parts with high electrical installation is a big topic. And we have a lot of different applications from other industry partners.

IH: What is also important is plant engineering, it's also a big business there. They have sometimes new designs and so on, then they first go to the prototypes and so this is important. And then, the good thing from the ceramics, properties is an advantage: corrosion resistant, heat resistant and wear resistant. So these properties are often requested by this industry, so it's really increasing the demand when polymers like PEEK are not working anymore, or also metals are not working anymore.

NS: Basically, ceramics is used when other materials fail due to their properties.

TCT: What is the company's approach to materials? Are you currently relying only on what materials are available with the Lithoz and 3DCeram machines? Or are you working to develop materials in-house?

IH: We have, in principle, some development department, but at the moment, we are just focusing on the equipment and then also just on the standard material to get better knowledge on that. Then, as soon as we have some higher demands for new materials, then we can always offer this development of new materials. This is possible, for sure. Bosch is huge and we have big corporate research, so we can do this, but at the moment we are focusing on the standard materials.

TCT: Do you have application engineers and, if so, how does the process of application development work at Bosch Advanced Ceramics?

IH: They send us inquiries, or they send us a description of the challenge they have, and in most of the cases they send directly drawings, and then we start the discussions with them. And often, I'm a ceramics engineer since 28 years now, you're always discussing the right design for ceramics, whether it's powder pressing, or injection moulding process, but it's more difficult with 3D printing.

NS: Now, the design needs to be suitable for ceramics in general, but also suitable for additive manufacturing, but we can do things with additive manufacturing that we haven't been able to do before. That’s where the knowledge comes together at our place and we discuss it with the customers.

TCT: What would you say is the unique selling point of Bosch Advanced Ceramics?

IH: We have a complete supply chain in principle of what we can offer, so we have our experience in house with development, we have engineering capacity, and then knowledge. And then we have different kinds of technologies available, we can do also something in addition to 3D printing, we have coding equipment, and we have a good knowledge and experience within HCCC, for example, so adding some conductive metal parts so you can use it as a sensor, for example. And overall, we can do it all out of one hand, so this is what makes us attractive for customers.

NS: Bosch is used to scale up in very big numbers too. And, as we have a lot of know how from ceramic injection moulding, for example, or other comparable technologies, we have the ability and the know how within Bosch to scale up very big.

IH: And automation is also our focus, so Bosch is well known to automise everything. As soon as we are coming to automise our 3D printers, it's the right way.

TCT: Finally, what’s the vision for Bosch Advanced Ceramics moving forward?

NS: We're doing already a lot of ceramic injection moulding and we want to scale up that even more, but I think the main goal is to get additive manufacturing into series production, just as another production technology, so if the part is suitable more for additive manufacturing, we'll do it with additive manufacturing. If it's more for ceramic injection moulding, we'll go the other way. And this is the goal: to scale this up in a big way.