Search

Zirconia is a very popular material among implants and prosthesis, due to its antibacterial activity, corrosion resistance and hardness properties. For these purposes, zirconia is to be sintered beforehand to obtain good dimensional and geometrical accuracy and then machined. However, the machining of sintered zirconia has always been a troublesome proposition, attributable to its extreme hardness. The excellent properties of zirconia were applied in this study to the cutlery design. Nowadays, cutlery/flatware designs are constantly changing. However, for manufacturing, the traditional molding process remains widely popular, despite having huge limitations regarding aesthetic and design flexibility. In the present study, we explore a new horizon of cutlery design by patterning using laser surface modification. Blocks were laser machined from zirconia green compacts, which solved the machining problems associated with sintered zirconia, and then inserted into stainless-steel cutlery grooves to produce a novel aesthetical cutlery design. This study addresses the parametric optimization of laser parameters (power, scanning speed and number of passages) to produce cavities in zirconia green compacts. Material removal, depth of cut, geometry and surface roughness were taken as output variables. For the analyses, a full factorial design of experiments was adopted. Moreover, this study provides the optimum parameters for the laser machining of zirconia green compacts to produce blocks with accurate dimensions and geometries. After laser machining the zirconia blocks, sintering was performed to achieve the desired dimensions. published

Dynamic and fast-changing designs for cutleries or flatware are one important nature of this production business. Globalized hospitality merchandise, the demanding nature of modern customers, throat-to-throat competition of manufacturing industries, and the modernization of the manufacturing processes are some of the major challenges for the cutlery (silverware) manufacturing industry. So far, traditional methods of moulding and shaping are considered to be the best to provide static designs and trademark patterns of the organisation. Preparing a designed mould for a fixed blueprint of cutlery and then producing it in bulk is the sole purpose of existing methods. However, with the invention of laser engraving and design systems, the entire business of cutlery production has revolutionized. Allowing for different designs for different cutleries to set without changing the whole production line was the aim of this study. As shown in Figure 1, AISI-304 stainless steel, which is the general flatware material selected for laser engraving, was evaluated with three most vital input parameters (power, scanning speed and loops or number of passes) followed by the analysis of geometry, roughness, and volume removed/material removal (MR) as output variables. This study will provide insight into the know-how situation involving the processing of cutleries and introduction of different ceramic materials to the surface to define desired patterns. We produced different design patterns by laser and ingrained ceramic blocks on the silverware. This approach is much more flexible and adoptable for pattern changes. Besides that, there is no need to prepare a mould for each design. Belo Inox, Portugal supplied the silverware as per the collaborative project agreement. published