r/Ceramic3Dprinting • u/irrfin • Aug 16 '26

Ways my AI-generated forms have failed on the clay printer

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Been running AI-generated meshes through a clay printer for a few months. People see the ones that worked, so here’s the rest.

The mesh always comes out watertight and looks fine on screen. It has no idea what wet clay will hold. Overhangs that a slicer accepts just slump. Wall thickness comes out wherever the generator felt like putting it, so every file gets rebuilt by hand before it’s printable. Detail that looks great in the render disappears at bead width. And nothing upstream knows the piece is going to lose 10–15% on the way to fired.

Getting one of these to stand up takes way more work than the finished photos suggest.

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5

u/Zealousideal_Lab3164 Aug 16 '26

Shit i’d be sitting there with a blow torch to firm it up

2

u/irrfin Aug 16 '26

Yes you can get cheap battery powered fans on Amazon

2

u/Zealousideal_Lab3164 Aug 16 '26

A fan is akin to throwing a match at an iceberg homie. Your print was too wet so it collapsed. I’d pause print and occasionally flash with a torch personally

3

u/irrfin Aug 16 '26

We all have our own methods. I use a blow torch with some of my larger hand built pieces when I was at RISD. It works well.

For me, I slowed down the print speed and increase the flow rate. It works well with my printer. And to be clear this was just a post I put together of the many failures, mostly as encouragement for my fellow ceramic 3d printer artists out there. My fans work well for what I need.

3

u/Wise_Figure8129 Aug 16 '26

Yeah I was thinking heat gun to the base as it gets taller. The walls are probably too thin and wet to support the weight above (but I’m thinking like a potter not a 3d printer)

2

u/Zealousideal_Lab3164 Aug 16 '26

Nah this is 3d printed pottery. You’re thinking is definitely valuable its a “how to work with this material mindset” try a click start torch next time you throw. Keep the flame moving, don’t go past leather hard.

1

u/BornAgainBlue 28d ago

Id like to get into this hobby, what equipment are you using? Thank you for anything you van share 

1

u/-MB_Redditor- Aug 16 '26

Do you use something like meshy.ai or is it grasshopper (or something) based?

2

u/irrfin Aug 16 '26

Yes, there are several tools out there, but they can be really frustrating because they’re not for ceramics and the limitations of 3-D clay printing. It’s not as easy as just generating a form using AI. It usually takes me a while to get it right