3D Printer
Printing Porcelain
Fabricating a paste-extrusion 3D printer for use with ceramic material
Client
My Role
Background
While an undergraduate student at the University of Denver, I authored and was awarded a grant to research and build a 3D printer for the Art Department's Ceramic Studio.
Research
Compiling Parts: Using Jonathan Keep's printer build guide as a template, I began to order and create the components.
The frame was hand-built using MDF and linear rods, which house stepper motors that powered the movement of three arms using rubber pulleys. The three carbon-fiber arms met at the middle on a custom, 3D-printed housing which held a cartridge system co-opted from manufacturing.
The frame was hand-built using MDF and linear rods, which house stepper motors that powered the movement of three arms using rubber pulleys. The three carbon-fiber arms met at the middle on a custom, 3D-printed housing which held a cartridge system coopted from manufacturing.
The research question proposed in the grant was how to scale the original printer schematics to roughly three times the size to hugely expand the upper size of printed items. This affected not only the parts that needed to be sourced but also the variables used by the firmware. The longest part of the build process was fine-tuning the firmware and slicer settings to be able to effectively print files to the correct scale.
Printing
Once the paste extrusion printer is built and fine-tuned, there is still the problem of making clay capable of being printed.
Clay generally comes in one of two forms: wet and de-aired, sold in 25lb bags, or as a dry powder mixture that can be hydrated. The paste extrusion printers, however, require a consistency somewhere in the middle (think creamy peanut butter).
Clay must be carefully slaked down, and then packed into individual tubes that fit into the cartridge housing holding the print arms together. Using the cartridge, the clay can be pneumatically fed through the print head.
Heat lamps are used while printing to help stiffen the clay over the course of the print so it can support itself, and the base of the print is trimmed and adjusted to match the rest of the piece once leather-hard.
Conclusion
Ceramics printers provide makers with the ability to create extremely exact or geometric designs that would otherwise be time or cost prohibitive.
Due to the open source nature of the build plans I used at the time, the capabilities of the equipment have only continued to grow due to contributions from the community.
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