Ceramic Printing Makes a Good Cup of Tea. May 13

Printed teacup & original

Ceramic artist John Balistreri wanted to explore the world of rapid prototyping and the ways it could expand the boundaries of ceramic art so, he teamed up with Gregory Little at Bowling Green State University and BGSU’s ZCorp 3D printer. Balistreri and the team at BGSU experimented with with various clays and binders to create finished, functional ceramic objects that are compatible with ZCorp’s printing process. ZCorp technology closely resembles current inkjet technology, the difference is instead of printing on paper, it prints on increasing layers of powder material.

Printed Ceramic Teapot

The teacup was created by scanning a hand-thrown teacup with a 3D scanner and reproducing the teacup with the printer. The teapot, however, was printed directly from a digital file, which opens up a number of possibilities that aren’t possible with traditional ceramic techniques. With traditional ceramics, the rendering of an object is limited by the pull of gravity. Because printed ceramics are surrounded by dry media, they are able to ignore gravity to create structures that are currently either impossible or unfeasible with today’s production technologies, such as engine parts, or superior water filters. All in all, printed ceramics look pretty cool and they might change the world.
Impossible Ceramic Object

Posted in 3D Printing, Design, Digital Fabrication, Functional Art + Objects, John Cromie, Materials, Technology by John Cromie | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing, Laser Cutting, CNC Routing

Related posts:

  1. research in 3D ceramic printing at Bowli
    Exploring the technical and aesthetic potential of 3D ceramic printing
  2. New material: Glazed Ceramic for 3D printing YEAH!
  3. Ceramic 3D Printing at Unfold~fab
  4. 3D Printing Clay like an Archaeological Process

3 Responses to “Ceramic Printing Makes a Good Cup of Tea.”

  1. Duann Says:
    May 13th, 2008 at 7:36 pm

    Thats Cool,
    do the little fingers inside the cup act as a filter?
    it looks like a stomach lining or something, like you get in authentic Vietnamese Pho (soop)
    nice

  2. Indigo Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 7:02 am

    This is amazing!

  3. JohnC Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am

    I think the ’stomach cup’ is an example of a ceramic object that can only be created with 3D printing, I’m not sure if it has any functional benefit. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from wanting a set.