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3D Print a Test of the Beer Bottle Neck
3D Printing a Clay Cookie Cutter-Stamper
A 3-minute Mug with Plainsman Polar Ice
A Broken Glaze Meets Insight-Live and a Magic Material
Accessing Recipes from "Mid-Fire Glazes" book in Insight-Live
Adjusting the Thixotropy of an Engobe for Pottery
Analysing a Crazing, Cutlery-marking Glaze Using Insight-Live
Compare the Chemistry of Recipes Using Insight-Live
Connecting an External Image to Insight-Live Pictures
Convert a Cone 10 Glaze to Cone 6 Using Desktop Insight
Create a Synthetic Feldspar in Insight-Live
Creating a Cone 6 Oil-Spot Overglaze Effect
Creating Rules for Calcium Carbonate - Wollastonite Substitution
Design a Triangular Pottery Plate Block Mold in Fusion 360
Desktop Insight - Difficult Formula to Batch Calcuations
Desktop Insight 1A - Compare Theoretical and Real-World Feldspars
Desktop Insight 1B - Turn a Feldspar Into a Glaze
Desktop Insight 1C - Substitute Wollastonite for Whiting in Glazes
Desktop Insight 2 - Creating a Matte Glaze
Desktop Insight 3 - Dealing With Crazing
Desktop Insight 4 - Add a Native Material to MDT, Build a Glaze
Desktop Insight 5A - Glaze Formula to Batch Calculations
Desktop Insight MDT: Adding a Material
Desktop Insight: Maintain an MDT as a CSV File in Excel
Digitalfire Desktop INSIGHT Overview Part 1
Digitalfire Desktop INSIGHT Overview Part 2
Enter a Recipe Into Insight-live
Entering Shrinkage/Porosity Data Into Insight-Live
Getting Frustrated With a 55% Gerstley Borate Glaze
How I Fixed a Settling Glaze Slurry Using Desktop Insight
How I Formulated a Cone 6 Silky Matte Glaze Using Insight-Live
How to Add Materials to the Desktop Insight MDT
How to Apply a White Slip to Terra Cotta Ware
How to Paste a Recipe Into Insight-live
Importing Data into Insight-live
Importing Desktop Insight Recipes to Insight-live
Importing Generic CSV Recipe Data into Insight-Live
Insight-Live Meets a Silica Deprived Glaze Recipe
Insight-Live Quick Overview
Liner Glazing a Stoneware Mug
Make a precision plaster mold for slip casting using Fusion 360 and 3D Printing
Make test bars to measure pottery clay physical properties
Making ceramic glaze flow test balls
Manually program your kiln or suffer glaze defects!
Mica and Feldspar Mine of MGK Minerals
Predicting Glaze Durability by Chemistry in Insight-Live
Preparing Pictures for Insight-live
Remove Gerstley Borate and Improve a Popular Cone 6 Clear Glaze
Replace Lithium Carbonate With Lithium Frit Using Insight-Live
Replacing 10% Gerstley Borate in a clear glaze
Signing Up at Insight-live.com
Signing-In at Insight-live.com
Slip cast a stoneware beer bottle
Subsitute Gerstley Borate in Floating Blue Using Desktop Insight
Substitute Ferro Frit 3134 For Another Frit
Substituting Custer Feldspar for Another in a Cone 10R Glaze Recipe
Substituting Materials by Weight: Why it does not work!
Substituting Nepheline Syenite for Soda Feldspar
Thixotropy and How to Gel a Ceramic Glaze
Use Insight-live to substitute materials in a recipe
Using Recipe Libraries With Desktop Insight

Substitute Ferro Frit 3134 For Another Frit

I use my Insight-live account to do the glaze chemistry to replace Ferro frit 3134 with combinations of three other common Ferro frits. We will see the challenges of doing this in three different types of recipes.

A. Insight-live

You can also watch this at Screencast-o-matic.com

First look at the glaze flow test that compares 3124 with 3134: They fire much different, 3124 does not melt nearly as well.

Recipe 1:
In my Insight-live account I'll open the first one, it has 20% frit 3134.
Duplicate it, edit the 3134 line to 3124, click Done and turn on the formula.
The Al2O3 and SiO2 are up, the B2O3 is down.
In calculation mode increase the frit from 20 to 35 to match the B2O3.
But now the Al2O3 and SiO2 are high. Drop the kaolin and silica to re-match them.
That was easy. We used more 3124 and dropped kaolin and silica.

Recipe 2:
It is more tricky because the B2O3 is double, there is more frit, there is only 10% kaolin. I will have to cut the feldspar to reduce the Al2O3.
Duplicate the recipe, change the frit, click Done and turn on the formula.
In calculation mode, reduce the feldspar until the Al2O3 matches - removing all fo the feldspar does not reduce the Al2O3 enough! And the B2O3 is high and alot of KNaO has been lost.
We need a frit that is high in sodium, low in boron and alumina: Frit 3110
Add 10 parts 3110 and reduce the other frit by the same. Bump up the 3110 to re-match the KNaO. We lost B2O3 in doing that.
We need a more concentrated source of boron: Frit 3195. Add 10 to the recipe and reduce 3124 by 10. Remove the feldspar and increment the 3195 by 5 and decrement the 3124 by 5 until the boron matches.
Nudge the kaolin down until the Al2O3 matches.
Retotal the recipe to 100.
The cost is up. We ended up removing the feldspar and replacing frit 3134 with three other frits.

Recipe 3:
The frit percentage is high and there is plenty of clay and silica.
Duplicate and replace the frit as in the others.
The boron is down and the Al2O3 and SiO2 have skyrocketed.
Reduce the kaolin and silica to re-match the Al2O3 and SiO2.
Boron was lost, we need help from a more concentrated boron frit: Add 15 frit 3195 and reduce the 3124 by the same.
In calculation mode reduce 3195 and increase 3124 until B2O3 matches.
Fine tune the Al2O3 and SiO2 by adjusting kaolin and silica.
Retotal the recipe and assess what we did.
The EPK was cut in half (but still enough to float the slurry) and silica is down also.
A mix of 3124 and 3195 supplied the boron and other fluxes.

Using this chemistry approach brings a high degree of confidence that the adjusted recipes will fire the same as the originals.

Links

Media Create a Synthetic Feldspar in Insight-Live
A step-by-step of how to duplicate the chemistry of Minspar by mixing other materials. You will learn the calculate process, the type of testing to do and how to keep track of the results with notes, pictures and links.

Substitute Ferro Frit 3134, using glaze chemistry, in three glaze types


Insight-live screen shot, substituting frit 3134

Can't get frit 3134 for glaze recipes? Can you replace it with frit 3124? No, 3124 has five times the amount of Al2O3 (the second most important oxide in glazes) and half the amount of B2O3 (the main melter). This ten-minute video presents a glaze chemistry approach that is easier to do than you probably think. On three different recipe types, you will learn to source the needed oxides from two other Ferro frits, 3110 (or Fusion F-75) and 3195 (Fusion F-2) and end up with at least 15% kaolin in each (to suspend the slurry). Each requires a unique approach. Two of the calculations produce improved slurry properties and one yields a recipe of significantly lower cost. If you have a recipe that needs this, get an insight-live.com account, enter it there and I can help you do the calculation.

Is Ferro Frit 3124 a viable substitute for Frit 3134?


Three melt from tests comparing these frits

This is a GLFL test comparing the melt flow of the three materials at 1800F. Frit 3124 is barely out of the starting gate and the other two have crossed the finish line! With frits chemistry is a big deal, they are all about supplying oxides to the melt. Frit 3134 is low-alumina/high-boron, 3124 is medium-alumina/low-boron and 3195 is medium-alumina/high-boron. Boron is the melter. Alumina thickens the melt and hardens the glass. Just from this it appears that Frit 3195 is a better starting point for calculations to replace frit 3134.

Global supply chain issues? Learn to mix and adjust your own bodies, glazes


Shipping containers piled high

Material prices are sky rocketing. And, the more complex your supplier's supply chain the more likely they won't be able to deliver. How can you adapt to coming disruption, even turn it into a benefit? Learn to create base recipes for your glazes and even clay bodies. Learn now how to substitute frits and other materials in glazes (get the chemistry of frits you use now so you are ready). Even better: Learn to see your glaze as an oxide formula. Then calculate formula-to-batch to use whatever materials you can get. Learn how to adjust glazes for thermal expansion, temperature, surface, color, etc. And your clay bodies? Develop an organized physical testing regimen now to accumulate data on their properties, learn to understand how each material in the recipe contributes to those properties. Armed with that data you will be able to adjust recipes to adapt to changing supplies.

Click here for case-studies of Insight-Live fixing problems


Insight-live help button

You will see examples of replacing unavailable materials (especially frits), fixing various issues (e.g. running, crazing, settling), making them melt more, adjusting matteness, etc. Insight-Live has an extensive help system (the round blue icon on the left) that also deals with fixing real-world problems and understanding glazes and clay bodies.

Pottery glaze peeling when multi-layered


Pottery glaze peeling

Dipping glazes can, in very controlled circumstances, be multi-layered. If you have done it for some time, with success, you may have been just lucky. These pieces demonstrate one of many factors that can produce failure: The top glaze contains 7% bentonite and 5% zinc oxide - that is 12% hyper-fine particles, perfect to create the drying shrinkage to make this happen. The recipe author must have reasoned that it could "pinch hit" for the inadequate clay content. But 7% bentonite in any glaze is highly unusual. And, it is actually not even necessary here. Why? The high percentage of Ferro Frit 3124 is sourcing needless Al2O3 (alumina), that should be coming from kaolin or ball clay instead. Frit 3134 is the perfect stand-in, it contains almost no Al2O3, but otherwise is quite similar. The equivalent recipe we calculated on the right has the same chemistry, but does pass a sanity check. It is not guaranteed to work, but has a better chance than this one. For assurance of success, the base should be mixed as a base-coat dipping glaze.

By Tony Hansen
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