Abstract
Clay 3D printing is a rapidly growing hybrid craft practice in which physical ceramic artifacts are designed and fabricated with digital technologies. In this work, we bring attention to the material element of this hybrid practice by presenting a collection of 3D printable clay materials with tunable shrinkage called clay-dough. Clay-dough materials are made up of varying ratios of stoneware clay to bio-based dough. As we fire these materials in a kiln, the dough burns away, resulting in the remaining clay shrinking dramatically as it chemically transitions into a ceramic. We leverage our ability to control the shrinkage properties of clay-dough materials to design a collection of 3D-printed ceramic artifacts in which the form and size are determined by shrinkage. Through this, we reflect on how human and machine work in correspondence with clay-dough to drive the creation of ceramics; ultimately, calling for material-oriented design approaches in hybrid craft practices.
Keywords
clay 3d printing; hybrid craft; computational fabrication; ceramics
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.250
Citation
Bell, F., McClure, E., Friedman-Gerlicz, C., Ta, R., and Buechley, L. (2024) Designing 3D Printed Ceramics from a Clay with Tunable Shrinkage, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.250
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Designing 3D Printed Ceramics from a Clay with Tunable Shrinkage
Clay 3D printing is a rapidly growing hybrid craft practice in which physical ceramic artifacts are designed and fabricated with digital technologies. In this work, we bring attention to the material element of this hybrid practice by presenting a collection of 3D printable clay materials with tunable shrinkage called clay-dough. Clay-dough materials are made up of varying ratios of stoneware clay to bio-based dough. As we fire these materials in a kiln, the dough burns away, resulting in the remaining clay shrinking dramatically as it chemically transitions into a ceramic. We leverage our ability to control the shrinkage properties of clay-dough materials to design a collection of 3D-printed ceramic artifacts in which the form and size are determined by shrinkage. Through this, we reflect on how human and machine work in correspondence with clay-dough to drive the creation of ceramics; ultimately, calling for material-oriented design approaches in hybrid craft practices.