3D Printed Ceramics 101

There are 3 phases to 3-D printing, Designing, Slicing, and Printing. This is the same whether you are printing with plastics, metal, cement, chocolate, clay, or any of the many other printable materials. 

Design

3D printing ceramics all starts in the design phase done with 3d modeling software. The programs that I have the most success and experience with personally are TinkerCad and Z Brush , but there are many, many options depending on your own budget and design preferences. 

Slicing

Once you have created the 3d model it must be sliced. This process converts your design to a file type to your printer will understand. Think of it as slicing a solid object into the individual layers that will be printed. This essentially tells your printer nozzle exactly where it needs to be in space to produce the shape you created.  There are as many programs available to do this as there are design programs. I primarily use Simplify3d but have had success with Cura for clay and PrusaSlicer  or Cura for plastics. At this stage you can determine the final details of your print. How tall and how wide do you want the layers, how large or small do you want to print, do you want to squash or stretch any of your dimensions. How fast will you be printing?

Printing

3D printers, like any other ceramics tools require a certain amount of maintenance, set up, and clean up.  Maintaining a printer involves keeping gears and rails lubricated and dust free, tightening of belts and bolts. electronics checks, and a lot of cleaning. To set up, first you need to prepare your clay and load it into the printer. I have a special attachment for my clay extruder to aid in this. Depending the the type of printer you use, the clay can either be fed directly to the printer or loaded into tubes or canisters to be extruded. 

The controls for my printer are all done through a web interface on my computer, some printer models have a control panel on the machine, and in many cases you can control the printers with the slicing program or other printer control set up such as OctoPi. The file is selected and the print gets started. The beginning of a print is where you are most involved, sometimes smoothing or helping the first layer stick down properly.  You can usually tell pretty quickly if a print will fail or not. For new designs there is often a fair amount of trial and error. I will often adjust various elements multiple times before I finalize a design, and then again with slicing elements.

Finishing

For those familiar with the ceramic creation process it is exactly the same from here out. Any combination of firing and surface decoration techniques can be used. 

A fresh print is extraordinarily delicate. The nature of the clay and the method of compressing thin layers together without the use of scoring and slipping, means that the piece must dry very slowly to prevent cracking and layer separation. It is also susceptible to warping and smudged layers. To minimize issues I will give a piece quite a bit of time very slow drying by covering it with plastic or keeping it in a damp box. The trimming and surface decoration can happen once a piece is leather (or nearly) leather hard. I’ll trim away the excess base material and add details and embellishments. Then it goes back to finish its slow dry. (anywhere from 1-4 weeks depending on the piece)

When the piece is bone dry its time for the first firing, called the bisque firing. The temperature in the kiln will slowly ramp up to cone 04 or 1945 degrees Fahrenheit. This  process chemically removes any remaining water and starts the vitrification process. 

The beauty of 3d printed ceramics is that it has inherent surface texture. It looks gorgeous with breaking glazes (glazes that shift color depending on texture) stains, underglazes, and translucent glazing techniques.