by Industrial Print Magazine
The April issue of Industrial Print magazine (IPM) includes an article on additive manufacturing (AM) in the transportation industry.
Lithoz is one company involved in this space. It is a global leader in ceramic three-dimensional (3D) printing, providing not just machines, but the full process chain—equipment, software, materials, training, and application-development expertise.
Lithoz has extensive experience in the development of innovative ceramic materials and in supporting application development for their customers, while while continuously broadening the horizons of its Lithography-based Ceramic Manufacturing (LCM) technology.
The LCM process begins with a digital 3D model, which is printed layer by layer from a photoreactive ceramic slurry. Blue light selectively cures each layer, forming a green body made of ceramic-filled polymer. After printing, the part undergoes debinding to remove the organic binder and sintering to densify the ceramic and achieve final material properties.
The strength of this technology lies in combining the functional advantages of high-performance ceramics—such as chemical resistance, thermal stability, and mechanical strength—with the design freedom of AM.
We recently spoke with Lisa Mikiss, technical sales manager, Lithoz about AM’s use in the transportation space.
IPM: How is 3D printing in this segment advantageous when it comes to spare parts or one offs?
Mikiss: Compared to traditional manufacturing AM is faster, more flexible, and more cost-effective for small quantities or referred to as a low-volume, high-mix scenario.
In addition, it is easy to iterate to the required design, eliminating cost and waiting times for new molds—just a .STL file and the same machine for all parts and materials. This also means no need to store 100s of different spare parts. Print on demand is possible.
Another benefit is better supply chain resilience. Manufacturers become less dependent on distant suppliers with potential long lead time. This means fast reshoring/nearshoring possible.
IPM: Would you say AM is predominately still used in transportation for prototyping purposes today or is it being used for final parts?
Mikiss: AM is still used for prototyping but at a great extent no longer limited to that. In terms of single units, components made predominantly belong to serial production batches.
We have customers using our machines for serial production in various industries. Our LCM’s earliest mass production adaptation were dental and medical industries, with semicon and machinery following suite. Now we see a third wave building up with green tech, including transportation with hydrogen-related topics.
AM is strongest when a part is custom, complex, and lightweight. Often multiple parts are combined into one design with no assembly required afterwards, which saves time and material. Ceramic AM is particularly strong when it comes to realizing designs, which were not achievable via legacy processes such as slipcasting. LCM is a tried-and-tested process that scales such intricate parts to serial production, which is a far step ahead from prototyping.
IPM: Various materials are used in 3D printing for transportation—metal, polymers, composite materials, and ceramics. Let’s talk ceramics, why and where are they used?
Mikiss: Ceramics offer material properties that cannot be reached by other materials, such as high hardness, high bending strength, high abrasion resistance, no corrosion, and no embrittlement due to aging.
There are a few solid examples of this, like hydrogen powered aircraft looking to use ceramic parts. Traditionally heat exchangers are made from metal, mostly copper. But when the medium that goes through is hydrogen, copper is no longer suitable because it will degrade in this harsh environment!
Aluminum nitride is an excellent alternative due to its excellent thermal conductivity, low coefficient of thermal expansion, resistance to hydrogen embrittlement, and lower weight than metal heat exchangers. To achieve these complex designs with AlN, this is only possible using AM.
This case study depicts this using Lithoz LCM technology. https://www.lithoz.com/en/dtu-sparks-sofc-paradigm-change-with-lcm-printed-monolithic-zirconia-gyroids-achieving-fivefold-power-to-weight-performance-for-lightweight-hydrogen-engines/
IPM: Last question, how important is production scalability in the transportation field? Do today’s AM technologies offer this?
Mikiss: Yes, as far as LCM technology is concerned, we achieve perfectly scalable reproducibility. Customers are producing millions of parts per year. Some of our contract manufacturers have long been working with numerous batches of small or medium quantities in various industries, including automotive OEMs seeking to back up their low volume/high mix parts supply chain for high-performance components.
The printer is just one element of a well-balanced system that has to be perfectly synchronized to challenge established traditional processes and enable AM to scale.
For example, Lithoz printer software is designed to build up printing farms of up to 100 synchronized printers—geographically independent if needed, seamless documentation, and ISO 13485-certified quality management and exact reproducibility. The material parameters are perfectly fine tuned and even customized for single customers going into big numbers. All backed up by a network of well-trained service providers all over the world who cover batch sizes from one to many thousands of units per year. This entirety is what we call the Ceramic 3D Factory.
Read more on AM in transportation in our feature article on the topic.
Apr2026, Industrial Print Magazine
