Filling a syringe

Second post today, I'm catching up while sitting next to a humming Rapman printing a batch of ceramics. Unfortunatly I need to keep an eye on the flowrate and correct pressure or printhead speed every few minutes. More on that in another post. Luckily the Rapman has manual controls. turns head-adjusts speed-back to typing. Yesterday I was going through the excellent documentation of the frostruder at Makerbot. All goodies that where not available when I started, frostforge.py looks very usefull for adapting to Rapman. turns head-does not adjust speed-back to typing. On the Frostruder usage page in the wiki I found the following photo's of Zach filling a syringe:

I used this method exactly once :) Its totally unusably for getting a syringe filled with clay and trying to avoid any trapped air. So here's the method we hacked together in a few minutes.

The Syringe Transfer Tool!

The STT is a syringe from which the front is cut of and that is used to suck up material.

You still need a canister or lump of air free material but thats easier than to try and get the material compacted in every syringe individually. turns head-does not adjust speed-back to typing. 

Next step is to fully insert the plunger in the syringe and suck up material. The trick is to pull the plunger while simultaneously pushing the syringe in the material. After 100 times you can do it one handed while taking a picture :)

Now you detach the plastic plunger stick from the silicone plunger cap without letting air in (tricky part). After that you smooth the clay and taper it a bit, I always put little pit in the top to make sure air escapes before the clay reaches the nozzle when transferring the clay in the print syringe.

Onto the magic transfer move.... You make a nice stack of pssst-turns head-perfect print finished. A nice stack of plunger stick - STT - empty syringe and you push the clay out of the STT into the empty syringe, et voila! 

Clay recipe

I get the question often "is this special clay?". I always said that it was fairly standard but since I have been diving deeper into clay it looks more and more like there's a whole other universe in that slurry. Its not pottery, its higher chemistry and I wish I stayed a bit longer in ceramics class :)

At first we tried watering down modeling clay and this works but its hard to get consistent results. Now we always start from clay powder that you can find in the better ceramics supply store. I found out lately by buying a different type of clay that I had been lucky with the first clay that I bought because the last one had a really tough time NOT to collapse during print. The difference? Fat or lean clay, the one I always use is semi-fat (or semi lean, depends on your ideologies) and the one that collapses is lean. I can't find a good explanation in english online but fat clay particles are more plates and have a better cohesion. (if anyone has the explanation somewhere in english?)

So you'll want semi-fat or fat clay for 3d printing with extrusion. Next you need to balance the viscosity so that it extrudes around 4-5 bar (60-70 psi) but has enough strength to support itself as a build object. A water : powder ratio of 1 : 2.2 gives the best results for the clay powder we use here, this may vary for the powder clay you buy in the store but this might be a good starting point.

You could also reinforce your clay with cellulose fibers (paperclay). I have only done a quick test to see if it extrudes but did not build an object with it. I can imagine that it clogs faster.

Next post: how to fill a syringe.

Claystruder 1.1 uploaded to Thingiverse

Took some time to update the files of our Claystruder for Rapman prototype and uploaded them to Thingiverse.

Claystruder 1.1 by unfold

Its a slightly improved version of the one we use for printing our initial ceramics objects. I made some parts stronger, fixed some errors and enlarged the part where the top section of the syringe sits so that it would fit more brands of syringes. The design is based on the Frostruder by Zach Hoeken from Makerbot but uses one double action solenoid valve instead of two single action ones.

It is important to note that it was never designed with elegance or easy printability in mind, its just a quick and dirty prototype.

New Packaging

We have shed the default style and put this blog in a new packaging!

source: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/

Anish Kapoor - Grayman Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, Beauty Evoked.

Some months ago we showed our first print tests with little square and round objects to a friend of us and  she pointed out that it really looked like a scale model of a recent artwork by Anish Kapoor: Grayman Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, Beauty Evoked. While we do know most of the work by Kapoor (you might know him from his turbine hall installation at Tate Modern) we hadn't seen his latest work yet. Looking at the images below you can probably imagine our surprise when we looked it up. That does indeed look like extruded slurry deposited with a 3d printer! In fact it is concrete and after googling some more we found the company Factum Arte that pulled this together. Factum Arte is a workshop based in Madrid that works with major artists and institutes on the production and conservation of artworks using various techniques like 3d-scanning, 3d printing, milling etc. They documented the process very well on their website here and here. You can also find all the movies on their Vimeo

Lovely quote: The Identity Engine is a shit machine that farts and craps its way along its ordained path, transforming concrete into stigmergic, self-organised structures. Wounds and gashes, pleats and folds emerge at will and either self-heal or continue to rupture. (excerpt from Unconformity and Entropy)

Some observations:

-We would really like to know more about pumping systems. While a frostruder style syringe head works as a proof of concept printhead for testing materials and software settings, it is not a good solution for producing useful objects because you are very limited size wise in what you can print without swapping syringe, a procedure that brings a whole lot of problems with it. The first step will be trying a larger reservoir on the side, something like an electronic caulking gun. But we need to brainstorm with some more people on this, time for a forum thread!

-Delcam software is used to drive the printer.

-In one video a little piece is mounted on the nozzle to smear all the slurry that rises above the nozzle output, smart because in our experience the quality of the print decreases if there is material piling up around the nozzle.

-Its not printing continuously, they can start/stop the output fast. No idea if this is done by the pumping system or with a valve at the nozzle.

-Support material is sand thrown in by hand, funny :)

Back

Our machine is finally back in the studio for a longer time so expect some updates. First experiences with glass for example. Stay tuned.

Last week we gave a talk and demo in Basel at Hyperwerk. Hyperwerk is an institute for post-industrial design (love that title) and feels like a large fablab/hackerspace but one where you can get a bachelor degree :)

They will start using a Frostruder and Makerbot for printing all kinds of material including ceramics. Besides a Makerbot they have a Mendel, ShaperCube and immediately ordered a RapMan after seeing ours. I am looking forward to their results!

Hyperwerk chief Mischa looking at a CNC styrofoam cutter

One exhibition, two repraps, lots of other great projects.

It has been quiet for a while, not because we weren't working but the opposite :) So expect a few posts in the coming days.

What was taking our time? Art centre Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium commissioned Unfold to create an installation 'featuring a 3d printer' for the exhibition "Design by Performance". The Installation is called L'Artisan Electronique and combines traditional pottery craft with 21th century digital techniques. Its still on display till the end of May. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, we will be operating the printer the 29th of may.

From the catalogue:
The world of design has been witness to how the boundaries between art and experimental design are becoming ever more blurred. The exhibition ‘Design by Performance’ is a showcase for performative trends in contemporary design, which focuses not on the production of a finished product, but on the production process itself: objects whose realisation is a continuous project, affected or formed by either the environment, the specific situation in which they find themselves, or onlookersAs such, processes and performances constitute a crucial part of Design by Performance, thus lending the exhibition its unpredictable and spontaneous character, and converting what is otherwise a pure ‘exhibition space’ into a space for events, interventions and actions by designers, artists and the public.

Participants
Atelier NL (NL), Maarten Baas (NL), Pieke Bergmans (NL), David Bowen (USA), Oscar Diaz (UK), Edhv (NL), Front (Sw), Martino Gamper (UK), Simon Heijdens (UK/NL), Eric Klarenbeek (NL), Sofie Lachaert & Luc d’Hanis (B), Laurent Liefooghe (B), Lawrence Malstaf (B), Bruno Munari (IT), Markus Schinwald (Au), Studio Glithero (UK), Studio Libertiny (NL), Tjep. (NL), Unfold & Tim Knapen (NL/B)

For L’Artisan Electronique, Unfold created - aside from the ceramic printer you all know - a virtual pottery wheel in collaboration with Tim Knapen. This pottery wheel gives visitors a chance to ‘turn’ their own forms. At regular intervals, a selection of these designs is printed in clay and exhibited in the space.
In L’Artisan Electronique, pottery, one of the oldest artisanal techniques for making utilitarian objects, is combined with new digital techniques. The virtual pottery wheel was realsied by means of a 3D-scanner and digital design software. However, the installation still clearly refers to the artisanal process of working in clay. The printing process imitates the traditional technique used by ceramicists, in which the form is built up by stacking coils of clay.

The other Reprap on display is in David Bowen's Growth Modeling Device that has been featured on a few Reprap blogs in the past. Its a fantastic piece that copies a growing union plant at regular intervals. David, who together with his wife also happen to be wonderful people, build his own Darwin style printer using a Makerbot extruder and gen2 electronics. The fun thing is that the printer has no top frame and is still very stable. I think he did a better job at integrating the Reprap technology in his installation than us, we didn't try :) More info at http://www.dwbowen.com/gmd.html