For the plus weeks of the 3rd year I chose to work with the 3d clay printer at the school. I have a fascination with digital fabrication and this is one instrument I never used. Apart from that I have a few projects that are compatible with this machine and I like that clay is recyclable and has a low environmental impact. So far I have worked with plastic printers and I can tell I have a good understanding of the most common parameters and issues. Last year I worked with a plugin for Rhino(3d software) called Grasshopper, which gave me another look at drawing in digital ambience and the more I learn, the more interesting it gets. Lately I saw a book on 3D printing with clay and grasshopper and ordered it with the intent of using it in the plus weeks. In the following posts you'll find all the things I go through and learn.

This period is 4 weeks long, I have divided it into 4 sections as follows: Learn, Improve, Experiment, Present.
In week one I will dedicate the time to learn about the basics of the machine from the tutors at the workshop. I have to understand the machine and it's current state, make a strategy, see what is missing, do first experiments with the clay and try to print a few simple things. Along that I will start reading from my guide book, there is some handy info on the clay part, but not too much. The book is mainly focusing on building the visual script for controlling the 3d printer and then designing in a programatic way.

Everything I know and learn I will put in the following categories

This scheme illustrates the type of setup we have. The clay is pushed by air pressure towards an extruder, the extruder itself allows for control over the amount of material. So far the printer has been running mainly with a continuous flow of material. This is not ideal as it requires too much attention from the user and can cause print damage in case of an air bubble or when the material runs out of the container.

1. Material

2. Container (reservoir)

3. Extruder

4. GCODE

5. Build plate

The clay printing process requires a certain viscosity and plasticity of the clay. From the guide I got the recommendation is to add 5% water to a brand new block of clay.

There are two main types of clay we are gonna work with - stoneware and earthenware. The main difference between the being the firing temperatures and the color. The first one is almost white whether the second one is earthy brown that changes towards red when baked.

In my case I saw the amounts of bone dry blocks of clay me and many other students have left in the workshop, that the tutors were smart enough to preserve. I knew clay can be recycled and have tried it once, it was a long process which required a lot of banging and basically turning the blocks back to ash. As my style of working is always looking for the shortest way to the destination I decided to experiment and crush the blocks very roughly (literarily smash them in the floor once or twice) and then soak them up.
To my surprise this worked as good as when I crushed everything to ash so this was already a good start. Bellow you'll find my process.

0. Setup