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URL: Retrofitting a consumer PLA 3D printer as a clay printer
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Related Information
Light-weight 3D printed plate-setters are coming
The way potters and hobbyists traditionally pack electric kilns is the height of energy wastage. This 18x22 hexagonal kiln load of bowls is a good example. A traditional pack on the left does 24. The new method using 3D printed setters on the right does 36. The left firing contains only 5.3 kg of bowls with more than 60kg of furniture - each 220g bowl incurs 2700g (6 lb) of kiln furniture weight - seven times as much! This type of packing also leads to uneven firing and puts a heavy load on the electrical components. The bigger the kiln the greater the efficiency.
These light-weight stackable setters don't exist yet. But they soon will. I designed specifically for this bowl and printed samples using PLA. Sintered alumina, the ultimate material, has 3x density over PLA - so we can predict the weight at 160g. These setters allow free flow of air, even the foot of the bowl is exposed. They can be printed upside down with one pass of the nozzle for most of the geometry.
New uV hardened resins for dental applications are the inspiration for this idea. These resins and hardeners are commodity items online now, anyone with a clay 3D printer (or the ability to retrofit an existing PLA printer) can experiment with recipes (even of inexpensive refractory materials like kaolin, ball clay silica) and print these.
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