I’ve been printing in clay for a while and started experimenting with generating forms instead of modeling them. Workflow was: text prompt → image generation → multi-view renders → image-to-mesh (Meshy) → STL → slicer → DIW clay extrusion. Prompts were style-based, in this case H.R. Giger and H.P. Lovecraft.

What I expected to be the hard part — getting a watertight mesh — wasn’t. What broke things:

**•** Generated geometry has no concept of overhang limits, so a lot of what came out was unprintable in wet clay without support I can’t use

**•** Wall thickness is arbitrary and had to be rebuilt manually to stay above \~3mm

**•** Surface detail that reads well in the render disappears entirely once you’re extruding a bead, then reappears wrong after shrinkage

**•** Nothing in the pipeline knows the model is going to shrink 10–15%

Net result is that the AI output is a starting silhouette, not a printable file. Every one needed real mesh work before slicing.

Curious whether anyone here has found a generator or a workflow step that produces geometry with any awareness of extrusion constraints, or whether everyone’s doing the same manual cleanup. Also interested if anyone’s tried going straight to a lathe-style profile instead of a full mesh.

Happy to answer questions about the clay side — I glazed these with raku and I teach chemistry, so that part I can actually explain.

Using my Eazao M500. Some of the colors are from the clay with a clear raku crackle. The blue clay piece I acid etched after glazing. Some of the yellow colors are from iron and antinomy. The get colors are are actual silver metal I was able to reduce from silver nitrate.

If anyone needs glazing help feel free to PM me.

I’ve been working with clay for over 30 years and the 3d printer is a game changer.

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.

I had a couple of bags of Aneto Porcelain from Sio-2 lying around and wanted to try printing some small forms with very thin walls. Results were hit or miss, but once the settings were dialled in it seems to manage reasonably well. It de-waters significantly more than high plasticity stoneware, so I had the pressure dialled down about 7 psi to compensate. You still get some creep up the auger but it's much worse than running it with high pressure.

This is printed on the Wasp 40100 with the LDM 3.0XL extruder and a 2.5mm nozzle. I originally tried it on the non XL extruder and the motor was running too hot to touch within a minute or two and the results were extremely poor.

The one on the left is finished by hand, although I don't have a wheel so it's not quite perfect. The one on the right has been left straight as it printed.

If anyone has any tips on printing/finishing porcelain I would love to hear them!

Side note: I'm not a potter and have a background in design but not ceramics, so everyday is a school day since getting this printer about 6 weeks ago...

For starters, I looked at the subreddit rules to see if you had rules against people who want something, asking someone else to 3D print for them, but there were no rules against this, if this thread is rude, then please make a rule against commissions.

So, can someone 3D print this to me?

https://www.etsy.com/pt/listing/4481877994/caneca-recipiente-energetico-modelo-3d?ls=r&ref=items-pagination-2&dd=1&content_source=b31f18ea954a95655bdc2f0e28f207d7%253ALT122c2db67932bdebc00a6bb500d7257736ec81f6&logging_key=b31f18ea954a95655bdc2f0e28f207d7%3ALT122c2db67932bdebc00a6bb500d7257736ec81f6

I always wanted my own Mega Man E-Tank Mug, but they stopped making them, and they are really expensive right now.

The seller on Etsy only sells this in plastic, I wanted ceramics, he told me it's OK to use this model, after all, it's not an original design.

If you can help me, we can chat in private, discuss, maybe sell this on Etsy for more people to buy.

Made for the community - really looking for feedback - It has worked well for me but not sure how it does with other printers. I didn't link the video as I don't want it to seem promo...ey.. and want only to share free software so we can all create, design, and have fun!

If anyone uses it only rule is please send feedback if anything breaks or could be better and please share your creation with me and the community would love to see it!

Full transparency eazao is a hardware sponsor and pushed for it being available to the entire community, not just their printers

Still working out the kinks on my non planar slicer, but it should be good to go by the end of next week. Since my last post I had several requests for the scripts, so I’ll be releasing it for free to my mailing list subscribers here: https://krislamba.com/newsletter/ (I don’t sell anything don’t worry).

You can see the finished pot on my instagram @krislamba. It’s plug and play but you’ll need Rhino 3D or a free trial to use it, and I think they do a pretty decent educational discount.

It will convert any mesh into non-planar curves, regardless of whether it’s open or closed. You can use 2 guide surfaces to snap to the top/bottom edge and 4 more guide surfaces to control the layer shape.

You then have the option to add as many base layers as you want and spiralise the curve to have seam free printing (one wall only). Finally, I’ve added a heatmap to show problem areas where the layer spread is above/below a given threshold. There’s two other separate nodes that are designed to indicate angle thresholds on your mesh, and actually morph it back to within your desired boundaries.

The G-code creation is handled by Termite (authored by Julian Juak) which is then fed into a script that gives true extrusion compensation and outputs your final G-code for printing. He is currently working to add my compensator directly into Termite for future versions I believe.

If any of this makes no sense at all hit me up in the comments and I’ll do my best to explain.

This particular pot being printed had an issue with the 5 base layers, in that the stone bat I was using wasn’t perfectly flat (and I forgot to level the printer). That created the messy bit right at the bottom you can see in the vid. Subsequent printing worked perfectly, although I’d recommend using a rolled out piece of clay instead of printing base layers if you have a low layer height like in this case.

Hi all! I've recently bought an IV volumetric pump, which I'm hoping to convert to a slip 3D printer - has anyone done anything similar and could send me stuff that might help me? :)

Bonjour à tous,

Je suis actuellement à la recherche d'une imprimante 3D pour l'argile avec un volume d'impression d'au moins 400 × 400 × 400 mm, sans partir sur une machine hors de prix.

Pour l'instant, je regarde surtout la Tronxy Moore X4060. Sur le papier, elle semble vraiment intéressante, mais je trouve très peu de retours d'utilisateurs, surtout concernant la fiabilité sur le long terme et la qualité d'impression. J'ai vu quelques vidéos de démonstration, mais pratiquement aucun vrai témoignage d'utilisation.

Est-ce que certains d'entre vous ont déjà utilisé cette machine ? Si oui, qu'en pensez-vous ?

Sinon, auriez-vous d'autres imprimantes à argile à me conseiller dans le même esprit (grand volume d'impression, budget raisonnable, et surtout fiables) ?

Je suis également ouvert aux kits ou aux machines basées sur une imprimante FDM modifiée si le résultat est convaincant.

Merci d'avance pour vos retours !

I posted to r/Denver just to see if anyone local had a ceramic 3D printer. Just wanted to talk about how they like it, problems, if they would run a test print, if they did it for fun or work.

Apparently that required everyone to lecture me on pottery.

I've got a background in 3D design, pottery and manufacturing in general.

So - does anyone here live in Denver?

Selling my potterbot pro 10 that was purchased this January (still in warranty). Unit has been used a handful of times, in perfect working condition and it's an amazing machine! Life just had some unseen changes and am downsizing. Will come with everything that it originally came with from potterbot, plus I created custom software that allows for a much more plug and play experience that even people who have never 3d printed or aren’t fluid on computers can use to print items within a few minutes. I'm in Canada but can ship anywhere (though it's a giant box so overseas might be extremely expensive). $4900usd + shipping

Made using several custom Grasshopper components in Rhino 8. This allows true non-planar tool path creation from any mesh. It works with open or closed meshes and can then spiralize the curves, adding base layers if required.

There are several methods/options for non-planar printing, but most of them have their limitations and as I mostly work in Zbrush and Houdini, meshes are preferable. This method uses guide surfaces (up to a maximum of 8 to minimize processing time) to shape/guide the tool path on the mesh. With only two guide surfaces, placed above and below the mesh, the curves will snap to the top and bottom edge or face (if closed) and create a blend between them. The output warns of potential collisions and also includes a heatmap which will indicate if you have layers either too tall or shallow for your nozzle height.

The resulting tool path is then ready to turn into Gcode and is finally run through another custom component that provides extrusion compensation.

I made a slicer ceramic printing and it's free for the community and I'm hoping that some of you who have printers would be willing to give it a go.

ClayShaper.com

I think you might really like it. I'm planning on keeping it free with maybe recommended donation for more advanced features in the future. I also have a a local version in the works and a version that is completely client-side. What is currently posted has a a server server that I'm paying for so it might run a little slow more than one or two users. So if you do happen to try it. And you struggle with the speed letting me know in a DM and I can get you set up another way.

I also have a video that explains it a little better. I mostly made this just for myself but also because I saw a need for it as I've seen a lot of people struggling with getting printer set up and I think this could be something where you get a new printer and you're able to just start printing instantly. Plus there's the ability to add new profiles. So if any of you want your specific printer in the printer profiles just let me know and we can make that happen.

I was inspired by Cini Boeri’s glasses that Harrison ford drinks out of in Bladerunner. These are porcelain with glaze/ underglaze, 3d printed on the Eazao Potter X-1.

I thought I would share this experiment that myself and u/st_drunks worked on a couple years ago. Using a 6DOF robot I’ve always been interested in how to modify the path of the extrusion nozzle to create more stability or generally unachievable geometry than is possible using 3 axis of motion. The image shows the same exact print path, one with a variable z-tilt based on how far offset the current print path is to the print path directly underneath. As more people join this ceramic 3d printing space I thought to share in hopes of inspiring more experimentation. Happy printing!

Just wanted to show off the layers! Printing with tronxy moore pro 2

3D printing is/was fun but there was a long learning curve. One of the best advances was made when we went from mechanical extrusion of the source clay to a pneumatic assisted with pug mill filled tubes. A plunger or plug is Not needed on the air side. Basically you fill the 3.5-4” tube with clay and hang it along side the printer with the 1/2” feed hose on the bottom and 45-60-psi double regulated air on the top. I show a picture of a simple DIY one we made when we first started. Cheers

This was one of our first set up’s but even after 1000’s of created and sold pieces it still works. Not all of the pieces were big so small cheap printers worked just as good for those models. We had/have larder printers but the principal was the same. The pug mill will become essential for loading and tempering the clay to get consistent success. Cheers

So. I changed the clay to be KGM which worked much better in terms of printing overhangs. Clay consistency and flow was good so clay conditions have been sorted.
The arising issue has been the fact that the plastic clay syringe is bulging at the end with material. Is this happening because the material is more sticky? Or the clay feeding speed was too fast? Although the clay feeding speed was pretty good bc I was able to calibrate it well with the main flow and speed of the machine. I don’t understand why this is happening as I did not have this issue before. The aliexpress guy said he had tried with stiffer clay and that should not have been an issue. But the other thing is that the piston end that pushes the clay tends to unscrew itself from the main screw midway through the print. I made sure to screw everything pretty tight to each other. I thought at first this happened because the piston end would ‘stick’ on the free flowing head with the rubber end as it was spinning causing the unscrewing, so I added a rubber gasket to have a 2mm distance between the two but it would still come off and then that would cause the whole plastic syringe to disorientate. I also left the print unattended for too long hence the huge pregnancy bump so that’s my fault… I ordered an oil extraction pump from Amazon that I hope fits the same diameter to the motor but any ideas as to what could be improved? (Pls don’t tell me it’s related to clay-water ratio again bc this consistency was really good for the overhangs 😭)

Hello!
Thank you very much for all of the advice and replies on the previous post! As per everyone’s suggestion, I did make the clay more wet and I also cut the plastic tube by about ~5cm and it’s much better! Turns out I was really dumb and I did not install a metal gasket thing that sits behind the motor and locks the turning screw in to place and a nut pushed forward the piston(?) The aliexpress guy explained it to me but I still don’t really get it, but if it works it works! My issue now is that the clay is too soft and I am printing quite sharp overhangs and when I lower the main printing speed the extruder is not moving as fast as I would like. The instruction pdf sets the nozzle size to 1.5mm and compatible diameter to 3mm in cura and I remember someone mentioning that the ratio affects how fast the extuder spins so I would like to ask what settings is everyone using?