Zetasinter chamber sintering furnace

The entrance of ceramic and metallic powder-filled filaments to the 3D printing sector has been a groundbreaking moment for many industries, since it has allowed ceramic or metallic parts to be obtained at a much lower cost than with traditional manufacturing methods, through heat treatment. Manufacturers such as Nanoe, BASF, and The Virtual Foundry offer high quality 3D printing materials that can be easily sintered.

Image 1: Parts 3D printed with metal and ceramic filaments after sintering. Source: Nanoe

A major downside, however, is that until recently the equipment to carry out the heat treatment at an affordable price was not available.

Nanoe, a French company established in 2008, specializes in the production of innovative 3D printing materials. Nanoe have a high degree of know-how in the field of ceramics, which led them to create the Zetamix brand in 2018. Zetamix is the first brand of technical ceramic filaments aimed at producing all-ceramic parts in an accessible and affordable way.

Video 1: Meet Zetamix By Nanoe. Source: Nanoe.

To provide a complete solution for easy 3D ceramic and metal printing, Nanoe has come up with three pìeces of equipment:

1. Zetadebind, an ultrasonic bath that facilitates the chemical debind stage.
2. The ZetaSinter tubular sintering furnace, a high-temperature chamber furnace that allows to carry out the thermal debind stage, the sintering stage and any other heat treatment to be applied to the final metal or ceramic part.
3. The ZetaSinter chamber sintering furnace.

The main difference between a tubular and a chamber sintering furnace is that tubular sintering furnaces heats up faster but it has a smaller processing volume (the tube fits small pieces only), while a chamber furnace can work with much bigger and more pieces at a time. The Nanoe Zatasinter chamber sintering furnaces allows doing just that thanks to its much bigger workspace.

Image 2: The interface and the inside of the ZetaSinter chamber sintering furnace. Source: Nanoe.

As a general rule, it should be remembered that most metal filaments require a highly controlled argon-hydrogen atmosphere for sintering, otherwise they will suffer oxidation due to the high amount of oxygen in the air. This is why the recommended furnace for sintering metal filaments, such as the Zetamix metal filaments by Nanoe, is a tubular sintering furnace. Nevertheless, there are exceptions to that rule, such as the Virtual Foundry metal filaments, which can be successfully sintered in a chamber sintering furnace. With BASF filaments, the debinding and sintering processes have to be outsourced, which is facilitated with the BASF debinding and sintering vouchers.

The ZetaSinter chamber sintering furnace is the ideal solution for sintering ceramic filaments in ambient air. Only parts 3D printed with the Zetamix by Nanoe filaments can be treated in the ZetaSinter chamber sintering furnace. Those filaments are the Alumina, White Zirconia, and Black Zirconia filaments.

Video 2: A demonstration of the ZetaSinter chamber sintering furnace. Source: Nanoe.

The main advantages of the ZetaSinter chamber furnace are that it allows working with much bigger pieces and more pieces than just one at a time - the capacity of the furnace is 15 liters. This helps increase production volume and decrease production times. What’s more, the chamber furnace is very easy to use, since it does not require a multi-step preparation process, which is the case of tubular sintering furnaces.

The ZetaSinter chamber sintering furnace can be used by professionals and companies, as well as by individual users to sinter parts 3D printed with the Zetamix ceramic filaments. Nanoe also offers a sintering voucher, available for all their filaments except for the Zetamix 316L filament.

Zetamix Alumina

Zetamix White Zirconia

Zetamix Black Zirconia

Nanoe Sintering Coupon