Clay 3D Printing Experiment

For this week's assignment, I made my first clay 3D printed piece.

Software: SketchPath (https://devonkay223.github.io/skCAM/). Hardware: PotterBot Micro.

After doing some experiments in SketchPath, I decided that I would take advantage of the symmetry feature and being able to draw freely to create a fun shape. I would then take this shape and manipulate it in various ways. I also loved the example we were given that utilized unsupported clay falling, so I knew I wanted to explore some of that.

The final design consisted of 70 layers, broken up into blocks of 10. For every ten layers, it took the shape and rotated it around 1 degree per layer. Then, between the layers, it would rotate them 12-15 degrees and reduce the scale by 10%. This resulted in every other block being unsupported by the previous one, as well as gradually coming to a point at the top.

I genuinely had a really fun time printing this. Getting to use my hands to help in the printing process, mostly just to nudge things in the right direction, was really engaging and made the printed piece feel way more personal. I was almost disappointed the print didn't fail so I could jump in and try to save it. The first layer was shaped weirdly for some reason, but I was able to stop the print right after it, scrape it off, lower the extruder, then continue on like normal. I definitely underestimated how big my print would be, my brain being calibrated to a much smaller layer height, so I decided to stop the print at 40 layers.

I think the result looks very cool. I was surprised at how well the print recovered around the unsupported areas. While I didn't expect it to fail neccesarily, I was surprised at how few layers it took before it was back to flat again. My favorite part about the piece is seeing the spikey overlap on the inside. I'd love to experiment with this medium more in the future.