3D Printed Pieces, Glazed and Finished: Fall 2022

 

Jordan Golob, Lego Minifig

The 3D printer is a relatively new tool in the clay studio, and one that I had never used before YVC purchased one. Because of the pandemic and my cancer year, as well as some time before the pandemic when it was down for repairs, we haven't really used the tool a great deal. (By my count, I think this quarter can only be the 5th or 6th quarter in which I required students to use it--but it may have been less based on how long it was broken.)

Brook Mason, printed sculpture

I starteed assigning the 3D printer as a tool for my Intro to Clay and Hand-building classes before I had properly learned to use it. When we started, the assignment was, essentially, here are the tools, here's what works, let's figure it out together.

Julia Snow, printed Tardis

I have a much better understanding of how the printer works now, and can help the students troubleshoot both the printer and software, as well as some basic troubleshooting in TinkerCAD, but there are still students who know TinkerCAD and 3D printers (the plastic kind) better than I do. What this means is that I regularly learn from students on this tool. 

Yarelli Sanchez, chicken pitcher

Students using the 3D clay printer this quarter had 2 main options for using the printer. First, they could used TinkerCAD or another program to design a 3D object and print it. The focus, if they choose this approach, is on learning TinkerCAD and planning for a form that the clay printer can handle.  

Amy Matson, Cats & Coyotes, printed and slab built 

The clay printer prints very soft, wet clay, which means that the clay sticks together fairly well when squished together, but it also means that it can't stand up without support.  If the printer squeezes out a line of clay on top of another line of clay, those two lines (coils) will stick and the bottom one will support the top one. The printer is very good at printing straight vertical walls of clay.

Carlos Garcia Alcantar, printed stacking forms

If the printer moves slightly to one side between levels, so that the top extruded line of clay is above but slightly to one side of the line below, the clay still sticks, still supports itself, but now the wall is at a slight diagonal. The printer can do this just fine and print cones, pyramids, vases, and similar forms. However, if the printer nozzle moves too far to one side between levels, the bottom layer of clay no longer supports the top layer and the top layer just falls into open space.

Carlos Garcia Alcantar, printed stacking forms

For this reason, the printer cannot handle overhangs, or flat tops, or the very top/middle of a dome shape. There are at least 4 ways to deal with these shapes. First, of course, students can avoid these shapes and design their print in a way that they aren't necessary. Second, they can print everything but the flat part or the top of the dome and simply add a slab or more clay later.

Derek Arneecher, printed shelves

Some students design their print in pieces so that only the verticals are printed and any and all horizontals are slabs added later. Jordan's Lego Minifig is a good example of this. She printed the body, neck, head, and cylinder on top of the head separately. She couldn't have printed the body and head, or even just the head in one piece because because the shoulders, the bottom of the head, and top of the head are all horizontals that would have fallen in. 

Yarelli Sanchez, chicken pitcher

Yarelli also printed her chicken pitcher in pieces, though in her case, some of them could have been printed together as one.  The transition from cylinder to cone on top could have printed as one, but she chose to print them separately. She cut off the top of the cone after printing, altered it, and used it as the beak. However, the three pieces of the handle and the feet had to be printed separately and attached later.

printed turtles, student work

All of the options I mentioned so far are for students printing a hollow form. The third and fourth options are to print with an interior support or to print an entirely solid print. In the student example above, the student, who wished to be anonymous here, designed the turtle in TinkerCad, but hte top of the back and head wouldn't print at this angle, so they adjusted the print settings in Simplify 3D (the software we use to "slice" our 3D objects into printable files. If you were to flip over any of these three turtles, you would find a latticework interior that adds stability to the horizontal or nearly horizontal clay walls.

Thai See (@Thaiidraws on Instagram), printed hand and hand-built snail

Thai printed her hand completely solid and carved away the excess clay later, after it had dried somewhat. This approach is more labor intensive in some ways, because it requires extra work after the print has been made, but it allows for less fussing with the software and may allow for a more complicated form that otherwise wouldn't print.

Amanda Goodrich, printed castle

The assignment paramenters for the printer allow for a completely different option as well. Students may print a simple form mulitiple times and simply use that form to create a more complicated form. Brooke's sculpture is a great example of this. She printed a pyramid 6 times, then attached each pyramid together in the middle to create a form that could never haver printed on its own. The end result is a sculptural form that would have been more difficult to make any other way. She went further by cutting and carving triangles into and through the printed forms after they were attached.

Brook Mason, printed sculpture

Derek and Carlos both printed simple forms that were meant to be displayed together. Derek's printed fomrs are a set of shelves, some of which are attached together. Carlos' pieces were designed to stack together to form a cube, but one broke before firing, leaving a gap in the design. 

 

Carlos Garcia Alcantar, printed stacking forms

Valeria's piece also broke before firing, through no fault of her own. It was a printed cylinder with printed shapes added to the surface after printing to create a more interetsting shaped vase. Amy did something similar, on a smaller scale, with her printed vase and tiny printed pyramid decoration on the surface.

Printed Vase, Amy Matson