Dr Johannes Homa, co-founder and managing director of Lithoz GmbH (centre) with the team of CerAMing GmbH (from left to right: Jinchun Chi, Boris Agea Blanco, Sebastian Walzel and Jörg Lüchtenborg)
Source: BAM
CerAMing GmbH, a spin-off of the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), today confirmed its acquisition by 3D printing specialist Lithoz GmbH. CerAMing has advanced the 3D printing process LSD (Layerwise Slurry Disposition) and made it market ready. With this method high-performance ceramics cost-effectively and with high quality.
High-performance ceramics have unique properties: they are unusually hard and strong, at the same time heat-resistant and resistant to wear and corrosion. They are used where other materials reach their performance limits. This makes them attractive for numerous applications such as airplane turbine blades, bearings of combustion engines, insulators of spark plugs or of power lines.
The CerAMing team, which was supported by the BAMStartup Slingshot and EXIST research transfer programmes from 2019 to 2022, has made the innovative and patented LSD process for high-performance ceramics fit for the requirements of industry and driven forward its commercialisation. The process enables extremely high densities of printed ceramics and consequently a particularly high material and product quality. The design freedom of ceramic components is also significantly greater through the use of LSD 3D printing compared to conventional production processes.
CerAMing's LSD process already attracted great interest in the industry within a short period of time thanks to its market- and impact-oriented development. The merger of the start-up with Lithoz GmbH is now intended to establish the technology on the international market.
"Spin-offs like CerAMing make an important contribution to technology transfer, which is one of the central tasks of our research," says BAM President Prof. Dr Ulrich Panne. "There are many excellent scientists with innovative ideas at BAM. Our BAMStartup-Slingshot initiative supports them with scientific know-how and our excellent laboratory equipment on their way to entrepreneurship."
Sebastian Walzel, one of the co-founders of CerAMing adds: "Thanks to the support from BAM, we were able to concentrate fully as a team on realising our vision for the industrialisation of ceramic 3D printing and successfully bringing CerAMing GmbH to market. We are delighted that CerAMing will now become part of Lithoz GmbH and that 3D printing of high-performance ceramics can thus be vigorously advanced with the resources and know-how of the world market leader."
Dr Johannes Homa, CEO and founder of Lithoz: "With the acquisition of the BAM spin-off CerAMing, Lithoz is expanding its technology portfolio through a strategic acquisition. With its competence centre Additive Manufacturing AM@BAM, BAM is one of the world's leading research and development institutions in the field of 3D printing. And CerAMing is proof that excellent science can quickly find its way into industry."