An englishman in Antwerp

Early last summer we got a friendly email from Jonathan Keep, a British potter who was very enthusiastic about what we achieved with 3d ceramic printing. His email kind of popped out between all the other emails of various people who are interested because Jonathan had been playing around for some time with the same idea of a robotized coiling machine based on a Reprap. Unfortunately he did not find time/budget to pursue the project at that time. Luckily for us ;-)
This was before Bits from Bytes started lowering the barrier by offering an easier (than starting from scratch with Reprap) platform to bootstrap this kind of experiments from. Without an XYZ robot to toy with, Jonathan managed to do some 'analog 3d printing' using a hand operated syringe and the results that he attached to his first email where fascinating and impressive to see:

His email ended with the plan to apply for a grant that included buying a BfB machine and doing a field trip to Unfold's office in Antwerp....

Fast forward: Jonathan came to Antwerp with his wife last october and we had a great afternoon (with tea mind you), it was great to exchange ideas. Here you see him using the virtual pottery wheel from L'Artisan Électronique like only a real potter can.

And a great snapshot of Unfold/Keep work:

Jonathan finished his Rapman last week and crafted the first objects with it. He will be posting to the Unfold ˜fab blog too and we are looking forward to what he will produce and post. We already feel the urge to finish the next claystruder prototype of which many bits 'n pieces are laying around in our studio because of the healthy 'competition' Jonathan put forward :-) 

The first post will be copy paste below until we can find how to add contributors. We also want to put a bit more effort in the Unfold ˜fab blog and post a bit more frequently from now on.