Advanced Processing of Ceramic Green Tape

Building upon the successes and lessons learned in the Phase I effort the Mentis Sciences Inc., Exothermics Inc., and Ragan Technologies Inc. team will adapt and scale the ceramic green tape materials and compression molding processes developed to relevant components demanded by industry. The team will demonstrate the capability of this process to produce low cost high temperature net shape ceramics. Using an iterative process, a near net shaped representative missile radome will be fabricated as the first demonstration article. Mentis Sciences will leverage prior experience and process used in developing highly precise compression molded pre-ceramic polymer composites in the execution of this Phase II effort. While the material and process developed during the Phase I was originally intended for a radome application, we anticipate that it is adaptable to low cost manufacturing of other complex ceramic components. To demonstrate this capability Mentis will fabricate a representative gas turbine blade. This component contains complex features including thickness variation, sharp edges, and negative contours all of which demonstrate the potential manufacturing capabilities of this material and process.