Interview with Martí Baltà, CEO of BARCELONA 3D CERAMICS, a brand specialized in 3D printing direct to ceramics that is dedicated to the modeling and engineering that each ceramic piece requires.

You were born in 1982 as a ceramic workshop and in 2015 you you focused on 3D printing. What did this step mean?

Barcelona 3D Ceramics is a brand that is part of a lifelong design and craft ceramics workshop . It has been the result of a specialization that 99% of our projects are 3D printing in ceramics or additive production in ceramics. In the different technologies at our disposal, which are the four large families that exist within the additive world of ceramics, we bring the classic knowledge of ceramics, which allows us to have a very broad coverage of projects within the world of ceramics.

The fact that we focus on 3D printing started naturally as another tool in the workshop to give added value to our customers . Little by little we discovered a world so wide and extensive and with so many possibilities that it grew within the workshop itself until it constituted practically 100% of the work we currently do. This meant a change in clients, types of projects and at the same time, which is very good, being able to achieve the portfolio of clients and the volume of business we had aspired to.

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What does 3D printing in ceramics consist of?

The 3D printing in ceramics  is a series of technologies within the additive world that have parallels in plastic and metal. Basically, these are technologies that allow you to manufacture 100% ceramic pieces with 3D printing. Unlike other technologies or families of materials in the additive world, the good thing about ceramics is that you always produce a final piece with 100% ceramic properties. At Barcelona 3D Ceramics we have the four main families within the additive: robocasting or paste extrusion, Binder Jetting, SLS or DMSL, which are others technologies that also have their parallel in other materials.

Within ceramic 3D printing there are many specialties: we have a very wide range of clients who they range from artists, designers, engineers, architects, pieces that go to the medical world, engineering, jewelry, technical design, artistic design... We have a very wide range of clients and we cover this thanks to being able to have all these technologies in the workshop.

Who are your most prominent clients?

We have national and international clients, we work a lot internationally but they are companies that have their headquarters here and entrust us with projects. We have clients ranging from large companies and brands, smaller design offices, municipalities... We have a wide spectrum of clients. We could talk about brands like Cartier, which is more dedicated to the subject of jewelry and design, large furniture brands like Kettal and also in the field of healthcare, like Puig, who are looking for properties typical of ceramics and design.

What projects do you carry out with your clients?

We have very interesting projects at an ecological level. With Nestlé we have big projects because they are making a big investmentin matters of ecological change. They are producing a number of pieces to help the crops they have across Europe to be able to create much more effective colonizations. They do all this through specially designed ceramic pieces.

We also have projects related to the theme of the regeneration of the seabed by plant species and the medical sector we have worked to make small heart valves with more precise 3D ceramic printing technologies.

The client comes with a project and this project is analyzed and derived to the relevant technology. In some cases it goes through the traditional process, which allows us to work with a wide spectrum of clients and with a wide spectrum of different needs and areas.

 Produce your own ceramic materials. Could you tell us which ones you work with and what characteristics or properties they have? 

The ceramic materials we work with are many because each technology has its own family of materials with its characteristics. They range from slabs and ceramics with porous properties to sheets and composite elements by technical ceramic printing. The own production of materials mainly involves materials in the Binder Jetting spectrum. We have many customers who are looking for the specific characteristics of ceramics rather than the appearance and there are those who are looking for both, ceramics with a design aspect but with very specific properties.

We tend to design the material patterns that interest us to obtain certain types of porosity, conductivity, finishes... The vast majority of the research we are doing is in the field of < em>Binder Jetting although we are also starting to work on the topic of SLA and DLP with vegetable resins, which is a topic we are very interested in.

Much of the research that we produce as internal research within the company revolves around ecology. What we would like is to be 100% clean. Within the world of photosensitive resins we are trying to explore a lot all resins based on vegetable oils. Within Binder Jetting we have achieved this and all the materials are 100% natural. In other projects we do not manage to use polymeric assets, but we are in this line of research projects.

Are ecologically based materials the fastest growing?

Within ceramics still no, because they have generally always been natural materials. Yes, it is true that polymeric materials are used for resistance, which are harmful, but I have no evidence that this is a research that is being carried out at the moment. Within the world of the ceramic additive there is a search for effectiveness in the final pieces, fidelity for the deformations it may have and above all good handling.

Do you keep the classic ceramic techniques?

It is very necessary, because otherwise it would be a lame workshop. Within technical ceramics you need extensive knowledge of ceramics. Additive technology is still a tool that provides you with parts that you have to manipulate. In ceramics there are three equally important parts: the making of the piece, the subsequent manipulation of the piece and the finishes.

In ceramics all the points they are equally important. In the last two, the treatment and the finishes, a knowledge of ceramics in the traditional field of technical design is necessary. In addition, in the post-process themost problems or errors that arise are problems of traditional ceramics, so it is necessary to have the knowledge of classical and traditional ceramics. In addition, many of the customers we have are customers who are looking for traditional ceramic finishes with the advantages of the additive, such as speed, precision, properties of the ceramic itself or complex ways of obtaining in traditional technology.

< p style="text-align: justify;">It is also true that there are many projects that we refer to traditional methods and technologies because it is not economically viable or because it makes no sense to do it additively. Therefore, we absolutely do need the know how of traditional ceramics.

What future do you see for 3D printing in ceramics? What challenges and obstacles do you consider it has to move forward?

The future of 3D printing in ceramics is very broad and very big because we have ceramic parts in our day to day in everything. From solar panels to car batteries, household dishes, certain cosmetic products... Ceramics are completely introduced into our everyday life without being aware of it. It has a lot of future due to the properties of the material itself, which are excellent for many things and for the hybrid materials that may come, ceramic materials with properties from other families of materials such as metals.

The main difficulties I personally see are that there are some technologies that need a little maturation at the hardware level, such as robocasting, which still lacks steps to reach fullness. Then there are other technologies, such as Binder Jetting, SLA or DLP that have amortization and cost problems. Traditional technologies, despite not achieving the same, make the price go ahead.

These are technologies that currently have exorbitant prices, of 800,000 euros. The day they become democratized and prices are low, they will be able to do everything. A lot can be achieved with Binder Jetting, and the others also have a long way to go and a future. You can do many things with all of them.

You are the ones represented in the State of the 3D printer brand POTTER. How do you collaborate? What values do POTTER 3D printers have that other machines do not have?

It is not our vocation to be representatives and we are only of this one because it is a very good machine. It meets the requirements of a regular machine. It is effective, does not spoil and is simple to use. From the beginning they have been designed for ceramics.

They are machines that have the great virtue of being able to do what large robots can do very quickly and effective within its simplicity and portability. They act very gently and do not endanger the interaction with the pieces you may need as a ceramist. We use them a lot and have never had any kind of problem. We have five in the workshop (three robots and two printers) and the truth is that we are very satisfied. They are the machines that work the most in the workshop, nine hours every day without stopping.  

What does it take to do 3D printing? Do you have your own infrastructure?

We have a workshop that must be about 500 square meters and we have everything a ceramic workshop needs conventional or technical ceramics workshop. We have a plantdedicated to robocasting with large ovens of different dimensions, and then a separate room where there is Binder Jetting and a small room for DLP and SLA isolated from dust by aspiration. What is needed is a suitable kiln for each technology and the classic infrastructure of a ceramic workshop.

Last year you participated in the   /">project  driven by the MAV Cluster on 3D printing in the materials industry. A project through which you designed a functional filter manufactured using 3D printing technologies with 100% ceramic components. What is your assessment of it?

It was a project that we immediately signed up for because we had a whole series of materials that we wanted to explore. The truth is that it resulted in a very interesting product with many possibilities that is now stopped in the research phase. We created a filter of some dimensions for the filtering of a domestic pipe. It is a filter that was used in collaboration with different agents contributed by the MAV Cluster.

It is a filter to filter microplastics and textile fibers made 100% ceramic and directly 3D printed, specifically with three different technologies within the ceramic additive. The result is very encouraging and we hope that they will follow the next steps. It is also our internal research within the workshop to produce a product that can be used at an industrial level.

< strong>Are you involved in other research projects?

We are involved in our own research projects, where we investigate for ourselves materials and products that may be of interest to us, and others linked to companies we investigate. The most interesting ones we have are at an ecological level: with the coexistence between ceramics and biological agents of the animal, plant or microscopic type. We have them from the maritime field, on land, in the air... and the truth is that it is very encouraging.

What does being part of the MAV cluster? Would you recommend other companies to get involved?

Being part of the MAV Cluster means being part of a cluster where there are agents who can be interesting for collaboration with different projects. It is an interesting information point where you can receive a series of inputs that can be very beneficial for the evolution of the company itself. It is interesting to be attentive to the inputs that can come from agents involved in the world of materials and 4.0. That is why we are there, and if I had to recommend it to any company, it would be from this point of view. It is an interesting, industrial, innovative fabric from Catalonia. You have to be attentive to what is being done there.