3DCeram's C100 Easy SLA system helps Avignon Ceramic 3D print multi-wall ceramic cores for aerospace and gas turbine casting

France's 3DCeram and Avignon Ceramic, a ceramic-core manufacturer founded in 1870, are jointly developing materials and processes for stereolithography-printed ceramic cores used in precision investment casting. Avignon Ceramic has run 3DCeram's C100 Easy, a top-down SLA machine that cures a light-sensitive ceramic suspension layer by layer, since 2017, targeting geometries with internal cooling channels and double or triple wall structures that exceed the tooling limits of ceramic injection molding. A central workstream is a printable ceramic paste for directed solidification (DS) and single-crystal (SX) casting, with Avignon supplying mineral raw-material and core expertise and 3DCeram adapting the organic binder system. The partners report a two-week turnaround from printing through debinding, firing and post-processing, and cite a 2025 small-series run on a military aerospace program as an early production milestone.

Ceramic-core printing sits at a narrow but consequential point in the aerospace supply chain: it doesn't replace foundry casting itself, it replaces the hard tooling that shapes what a foundry can cast. Ceramic injection molding remains dominant for standard core geometries, so this collaboration is about extending investment casting into wall geometries CIM tooling cannot reach, rather than displacing an established process outright. That distinction matters for a sector where qualification cycles are long and material traceability, not machine throughput, determines whether a part clears a customer's casting spec. The DS/SX paste work in particular targets turbine blade single-crystal casting, a segment where dimensional accuracy and surface quality carry more weight than print speed.

The useful signal here is narrow and concrete: a 150-year-old core supplier moved from prototype testing to a small production series on a defense-adjacent program, with digital design changes turned around in hours rather than new tooling cycles. Buyers evaluating this route should watch whether the DS/SX paste clears qualification on additional programs beyond the initial military case before treating it as a repeatable production option.