The PDF Manual.
Modified: November 20, 2021
Download it from the Files panel in your Insight-live.com account or from the home page at https://digitalfire.com (current downloads only include the program file, manual, starter recipe, materials - overrides data is built in).
We moved functionality to a private account at Insight-Live.com - because people now expect to get at their data from any device anywhere. And for our survival. Ceramic lab work is much bigger than glaze chemistry, it is a physical world where testing, observation, record-keeping are vital. Insight-Live is about maintaining that data. Its recipes share pictures, they have firing schedules, notes, development history, testing data, links, they belong to projects. And they accumulate into the thousands and are easy to find and compare.
Desktop Insight, by default, opens and saves recipes to its INSIGHTDATA.DB recipe database file (that file is in your documents/insight folder, it can be uploaded and imported into Insight-live). If Desktop Insight does not find the INSIGHTDATA.DB file on startup, it imports, into its database, all the recipe files (e.g. RCP, RCX) it finds in your documents/insight/recipe folder (it does not erase the original files, but no longer uses them). From then on, when you choose File -> Open (not File -> Open File System) you open recipes from its database (using the Recipe Database Window). When you Save you save to the database. See page 94 of the manual for more information.
Because you have to be able to compare ten recipes side-by-side. For physics as well as chemistry. And people need to be able to find thousands on any device from anywhere.
Insight FAQ
There is a direct relationship between the way ceramic glazes fire and their chemistry. Insight is a calculation tool anyone can use to learn and harness the power of glaze chemistry.
Without glaze chemistry you'll never really have control and you could be a slave to your suppliers or the trafficing in recipes that never work.
Overwhelmed by glaze chemistry? Try starting here.
"I have had excellent results lowering the expansion in the existing glaze formulas enabling me to use a much stronger clay body and eliminating the fracturing after the glaze fire. We now get a 100% yield compared to the 75% to 80% yield from the beginning of the company almost 20 years ago."
"I have to share my absolute joy with you. I pulled out my tests from the kiln today and they were absolutely wonderful!!!! When people ask for the recipe, I'm going to tell them, "I'll do better than give you the recipe--I'll show you how you can create your own glazes that will be as wonderful these." Then I'm going to refer them to your web page. Thank you! Thank you! I am on cloud 9, where I doubt if I will sleep tonight due to all of the excitement!"
"I must compliment you on the development of INSIGHT. It is a pleasure to work with the programme."
"What you have provided is a fabulous way for people to make glaze technology accessible and understandable. Though I still know how to do everything by hand, Insight has certainly enabled me to get things done quickly and broaden my diagnostic abilities. Thank you for making all of this available to the ceramic community. "
"Thank you. Cannot live with out it!"
"I'm actually a trained chemist, I specialised in ceramic Chemistry before I moved over to bio and Forensic. I think Insight is a great tool for any ceramic chemist, it's great that we don't have to faff about developing our own spreadsheets!!! I used it all the time when I took my doctorate years ago. It's been a while.... so I really need to get to know the programme again. "