What do you guys think?
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I remember touring Houston’s makerspace a few years back and one of the people there was working on a similar concept. It’s pretty neat to see someone make it work that well.
If y’all haven’t tried it, Formlabs also makes a fairly new resin for printing ceramics, https://formlabs.com/store/us/form-2/materials/ceramic-resin/.
Oooo, cool to see new tech in the ceramic world! As a purist I think slip casting is going too far so this is triggering me lol 
I’m with Liam – no thank you. I’m sure it’s great if you need something specific for industrial purposes.
Jason, @cmcooper0’s other 1/2, had some resin he wanted to work with. As I understand it, it would work just fine in our current resin printer. There were some “issues”, as it requires a goofy firing schedule to burn out the binder. Safely? One assumes that it wouldn’t be TOO unsafe…
It’s a a cool material but not only does it have a very long and particular firing schedule but it also has a variable shrinkage rate depending on the axis. Will require very particular design work. Fun but fussy!
@JasonM314 has researched it heavily if anyone has questions.
Ceramic printers are interesting but I would need a compelling reason to spend money on one. I can already create a plaster mold for slip casting using a 3D print with filament. I’m looking forward to seeing the technology develop.
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I think they are very interesting for making quick (relatively speaking), heat resistant, component parts. Places where a plastic part could have issues with temperature or stretching. Less appealing in a decorative ceramics sort of sense for me.
My GlassWorks perspective, I would love to give it a shot to create glass molds.
Didn’t we have what is need for ceramics to give this a test run? is there an opportunity at DMS to give this a try? more info on what is currently available at DMS please.
One persons relaxing art or craft, is another mans nose up in the air.
Noses up in the air are not attractive.
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I think your need would be better served by making a mold for slip-casting. Firing that is simple. Firing the resin/clay mix stuff is “special”. Plus, someone would have to do the math. Are you up for that?
Thinking about making a mold – make a positive with wood working? A positive could also be made via regular ABS 3D printing. Max can make molds. I am assuming that making the plaster mold is fairly simple.
Also, while I’m not up on the price for the special resin/clay stuff, I suspect that it would make just buying a mold from one of the glass companies look cheap.
To recap my “feeling” about this; huge learning curve, no improvement in cost or turnaround in time-to-glass-mold. It just doesn’t seem like it’s a good deal. For some one that’s got a lot of time to fiddle around with it, and isn’t concerned about cost, it could be fun.
For that matter, I’ve seen videos of 3D printers for glass. Given that they’re working with molten glass, I kind of assume that they’re out of our budget. But – if you really want to jump ahead, that’d be straight to efficiency.
3D printing glass would rock! there just isn’t enough time in the day for me to pursue all my interest!
I thought we already had in house what was needed to print ceramics, That there was some firing hold backs.
There’s a Form 2, which will print the resin I linked above, but it does require a specific firing schedule, which I don’t know anything about.
The printer is out for maintainence now but it should be back in a few weeks. You’d probably need to get approval to use the special resin, but it’s possible.
Nice, thank you for the info. looks like I need to add this to my list of things to learn
A separate training class is required to use the Form 2 printer. Unless the policy has changed, no additional training or approval is needed to use any of the resins stocked by 3D Fab. If you provide your own, the rules say it must be from FormLabs and you will probably have to provide your own tank as well.
oi! Bill you pinched my artistical nerve