Additive manufacturing of salt hydrates: Primary process parameters and case study

This paper presents the latest outcomes in the field of additive manufacturing. Some salt hydrates as printing materials provide many advantages (such as good availability and low toxic behaviour) compared to other materials, thus making them particularly suitable for specific applications. A layered deposition method for salt hydrates is developed from the binary phase diagram of sodium acetate trihydrate, which is first described mathematically. The experimental results then verify the theoretically described method. Thus, the presented process can also be applied to other salt hydrates which are based on the same physical basic principles. Moreover, this novel process has been termed as Subcooled Liquid Printing (SLP) by the authors.