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I've been seeing a few things around the internet about metal clay printing.
http://newton3d.com/about/

With a different extruder I think any printer could be adapted to print that. I don't know how practical the metal is, but looks pretty and I can think of a few ladies that would appreciate jewelry printed with that material vs. PLA.

It's amazing what keeps coming down the line, new methods of printing, new printing materials, etc.
I can not even imagine where we will be in 10 years.

I wonder what kind of shrinkage it would have. The stuff that is typically used in jewelry, does not flow that well. Adding some kind of fluid to it to make it less viscous would probably give it more shrink, or porosity, or both. PMC, already tends to be pretty porous, if you want the fine craft look, you have to burnish the hell out of it. Of course, I tend to burnish the hell out of pieces I Cast.


[img]http://neurascenic.com/show/phoenixDown.jpg[/img]

neurascenic wrote:I wonder what kind of shrinkage it would have. The stuff that is typically used in jewelry, does not flow that well. Adding some kind of fluid to it to make it less viscous would probably give it more shrink, or porosity, or both. PMC, already tends to be pretty porous, if you want the fine craft look, you have to burnish the hell out of it. Of course, I tend to burnish the hell out of pieces I Cast.


[img]http://neurascenic.com/show/phoenixDown.jpg[/img]

That jewelry you showed looks great, are those some of your own castings?

I use metal clay and metal polymer clay all the time and these are very different materials. The metal polymer clay is like Playdo and not suitable to extrude, but metal clay can be had in powder form and mixed with water to a slip consistency or thicker. This is what the printer above is using. Mixed to a consistent suitable to extrude, shrinkage will be on the order of 10-15%. You account for this in the design.

That's really cool. Now what if you printed a mould out of PLA or ABS and filled it with the metal clay. When you cook it would it burn off all the plastic? That might be a pretty slick way to work around the whole extruding the clay issue.

mhackney wrote:I use metal clay and metal polymer clay all the time and these are very different materials. The metal polymer clay is like Playdo and not suitable to extrude, but metal clay can be had in powder form and mixed with water to a slip consistency or thicker. This is what the printer above is using. Mixed to a consistent suitable to extrude, shrinkage will be on the order of 10-15%. You account for this in the design.

Are the metal particles aluminum?

Check out HomerJay's ceramic printing project in this thread: http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... ame#p17532

I haven't checked in on them in a while, but I'd assume that things are still moving forward. Any slurry or goop that you want can probably be printed if you figure out exactly how to do it right.

It really is amazing what you can modify these machines to do. It's neat that it's so accessible to the "everyman" and that we can all help develop instead of it being something that we're merely slave consumers to.

mhackney wrote:I use metal clay and metal polymer clay all the time and these are very different materials. The metal polymer clay is like Playdo and not suitable to extrude, but metal clay can be had in powder form and mixed with water to a slip consistency or thicker. This is what the printer above is using. Mixed to a consistent suitable to extrude, shrinkage will be on the order of 10-15%. You account for this in the design.[/quote

]Funny I forgot about the water based stuff, as I happen to have some, just haven't gotten around to using it yet. Stainless and a brass material.
thought, even it, at the expected shrinkage is still a "clay" not a "slip" expect a greater shrinkage.

Eaglezsoar wrote:That jewelry you showed looks great, are those some of your own castings?

the Phoenix, was cast by me on somebody else's equipment (including their guidance), the tips I had done by a local jewelry shop.
I am currently building my studio. I have the kiln, and am building the Vacuum casting system. Getting there. And thank you for the Props! I really appreciate that.

daftscience wrote:That's really cool. Now what if you printed a mould out of PLA or ABS and filled it with the metal clay. When you cook it would it burn off all the plastic? That might be a pretty slick way to work around the whole extruding the clay issue.

As I understand it, PLA is the way to go. you can burn it out. Though, again, as I understand, it isn't as clean as the traditional wax burnout.
Eventually, one of my goals is to extrude wax. I have some ideas regarding this, but, I have to get my rMax working first.

Until then, I do plan on using PLA to create investment patterns for things like building components for a lathe. And... so many other things.

Ultimately, my goal is to build tools for making jewelry and sculptures rather than a direct translation. But that is just my preference. More power to the future, regardless how you want to grab it by!

Eaglezsoar wrote:

mhackney wrote:I use metal clay and metal polymer clay all the time and these are very different materials. The metal polymer clay is like Playdo and not suitable to extrude, but metal clay can be had in powder form and mixed with water to a slip consistency or thicker. This is what the printer above is using. Mixed to a consistent suitable to extrude, shrinkage will be on the order of 10-15%. You account for this in the design.

Are the metal particles aluminum?

There are any number of different kinds. Mhackney is correct, I just forgot, that there are other types of metal clays. regardless of their "carrier" you can get Silver, Gold, Stainless ... etc...

I have a Stainless and a Bronze (I said brass up top... but, no it is bronze) material, that I actually haven't played with yet.

http://artinsilver.com/hadarsclay.html

I'm excited about your intention to print investment casting wax. I've thought for a long time that this would be an awesome advancement. Make sure to let us know how it goes!

Jimustanguitar wrote:I'm excited about your intention to print investment casting wax. I've thought for a long time that this would be an awesome advancement. Make sure to let us know how it goes!

the trick with it will be; when it melts, it has a low viscosity at least compared to what extruding is typically used.
and a very short transition between solid and liquid.

But it does have a good surface tension, that I think I can exploit.
I would try to use something more like a quill pen instead of an extruder. Just automatically load the quill from above (really the quill added to the end of the extruder)

I have experimented with this by hand, and it looks like crap, I am pretty shaky, but it does work.
If I have one of my experiments laying around, I'll post a pic of it.


Overhangs will be greatly reduced. Bridging... probably not and other factors I haven't even considered yet... hell yea.
One thing is to figure out a way to detect if there is a break in the surface tension (no liquid being laid down) Maybe detect the capacitance?


Of course, this is just fanciful ideas at this point.

Has anybody explored dual extruders, paste and hotend? Maybe PLA as support or something?

What I want to do is print my metal clay (Metal Adventures Inc. is my company) by extruding it from a syringe. The UP! that I modified to do this has too much vibration of the platform that makes the clay sag. I'd like to modify a Delta to control a syringe. Does anyone have any Ideas on how to do this?

Struve wrote:What I want to do is print my metal clay (Metal Adventures Inc. is my company) by extruding it from a syringe. The UP! that I modified to do this has too much vibration of the platform that makes the clay sag. I'd like to modify a Delta to control a syringe. Does anyone have any Ideas on how to do this?

Are you still interested in working on this concept?