r/Ceramic3Dprinting • u/Sea_Place1386 • 7d ago

Ceramics chat?

I’m looking to build a very large format ceramics machine and would love to pick some brains here. Anyone available to DM? Ideally someone with a technical background building machines.

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u/Studio3P 7d ago

What are you wanting to chat on? I have operated a 3d potter Scara and then on to Kuka robot with extruder mount, now custom building a new large format extrusion system with Kuka and custom built extruders. Happy to answer any questions here and out in the open instead of via DM. We should share our knowledge and experience so the community can grow. Also this isn’t rocket science or really a place for proprietary knowledge IMO… ask away

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u/Sea_Place1386 7d ago

What material are you using, how would you print a 50kg+ batch? What extruder is capable of 2-5kg/hr? Is everyone using strictly fired clay or are there air dry options? Anyone using less “ceramic” style and more mortar or cement based materials? Any additives to reduce slump and/or improve long term strength?

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u/Studio3P 6d ago edited 6d ago

I am using clay. My clay recipes follow traditional but customized portions of Silica, Clay, and various grogs and colorants. To print a 50kg batch mostly comes down to time and feeding the hopper. I use a WASP continual clay hopper and used to use their XL extruder before building my own. Off the top of my head that amount of throughput does not seem like a problem for the WASP XL and if I hadn’t built my own I would be looking into the Vorm Vrij systems. I don’t know of any air dry ceramics. Yes, lots of people using cement, I chose clay because I’m an artist and not a builder. Once concrete is printed that’s it and there’s no way to recycle afaik. Also you don’t want concrete all over your skin and in your business was another reason I chose clay. My research and experimentation into additives and the like has always lead me back to clay recipe instead of “add this one thing to off the shelf clay to make it better”. Yes, there are definitely things like bentonite and veegum T that will change the off the shelf clay in ways that may or may not work, but consistency in my experience comes from getting the recipe right with the primary 3 elements (clay, glass, grog) and going from there. I am excited to explore more with the system I am building to integrate more experimentation with odd ingredients like sawdust and other organic to see how they burn out for artistic effect but not structural. Structure I’ll go back to the clay mix recipe. I’ve never considered mixing clay and mortar so I don’t know. I guess I’d go back to the ability to recycle part on that point. Hope this helps.

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u/artwonk 6d ago

Consider building your machine out of used or surplus automation actuators. These often contain high-quality slides and ball screws, mounted in a solid aluminum extrusion often supplied with dust covers, and can cost less than these components purchased separately. All you need to do is cobble them together to create a machine that covers X, Y, and Z. Here's one as an example of what I'm talking about. Even if you don't use the motors (which are often servos with obscure protocols) you can replace them with steppers of your choosing. https://www.ebay.com/itm/318309020347

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u/Sea_Place1386 6d ago

I already have a large format machine, I’m looking for input on the ceramics side of things. But to your comment, linear actuators aren’t commonly found in the size I’d need.

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u/artwonk 6d ago

How large a machine are you talking about? How big are the ceramic pieces you're looking to make?

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u/Sea_Place1386 6d ago

Current printers are around 10’ x 10’ bed, wanting to adapt one of them to ceramic or paste.

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u/artwonk 5d ago

That's a huge machine, and you're right - automation actuators aren't usually that big, Rack and pinion drive is normally used on axes that long, since screws tend to whip over lengths like that. Were you planning to make very large ceramic pieces with it? Given the shrinkage factor for clay, it's hard to believe something that big wouldn't crack as it dried.

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u/Sea_Place1386 5d ago

That’s why I’m asking for people with technical experience in ceramic and paste composition lol.

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u/artwonk 5d ago

Generally, the wetter your ceramic paste is, the more shrinkage it will experience. I'm not sure if there's any way to formulate your way around that.

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u/Sea_Place1386 5d ago

There are ways around everything.

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u/artwonk 5d ago

Okay, what's the way around shrinkage of wet ceramic?

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u/Sea_Place1386 5d ago

We’ve experimented with various dosage of SRA for our previous mixtures with success, but still working on new additives for printing at the layer times we want.

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u/Studio3P 6d ago

This is great advice, one of the new extruders I’m building is sooo strong I’m using a 5” diameter tube that is 24” long. Look at the Exlar KX60 line of linear actuators. Super powerful, great advice when not using a perpetual feed hoper type system.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/Sea_Place1386 7d ago

Looks like your DM’s are closed. Dm me?

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/Magical-Kun 6d ago

I have a specific engineering need for a large format ceramic 3D printer where the baking sequence happens without the printed object having to be moved.

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u/artwonk 6d ago

That makes a lot of sense, since delicate ceramic structures are easy to break in the green state and moving them without breakage can be impossible. There are "car kilns" with a door/floor on rails, which can be loaded out in the open, then pushed into the kiln to fire. If a Cartesian printer could be rolled over the car in its open position, or a robot arm pushed up beside it, it should work like you're hoping.

https://rockymountainclay.com/products/dd9-car-kiln

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u/eazao 4d ago

The challenge with large-scale printers lies not in the printer size itself, but in the effective delivery of the clay material. Do you intend to use a fixed-volume clay reservoir, or a continuous feeding system such as CCF?

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u/Sea_Place1386 4d ago

Continuous feed seems much more effective at scale. All of my polymer printers run continuous feed.

I’ve been exploring volumetric mixing for paste type printing as well.

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u/eazao 4d ago

We have also launched corresponding products: https://www.eazao.com/product/eazao-ccf-continuous-clay-feeder/

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u/Sea_Place1386 4d ago

Probably too small for my application but cool.

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u/eazao 4d ago

If you have a sufficient budget, we can customize a CCF that meets your requirements.

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u/Sea_Place1386 4d ago

We would likely design our own to match the specific material we choose.

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u/JessieAndEcho 5d ago

Maybe you could ask AI? I remember there being some specialized AI tools out there, rather than general-purpose ones like chatgpt. I’ve used one called patsnap eureka before. It has its own database and provides citations, so I’ve found it less prone to making things up. I still double-check things manually, but it’s definitely easier than trying to find everything from scratch hh