Gallery: A Huge, Clay-Filled Robot That Replaces the Potter's Wheel
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[Olivier van Herpt's](http://oliviervanherpt.com/) five-foot tall, delta-style 3-D printer made from water cut steel prints geometrically complex ceramic pots with a synthetic human touch.
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By combining software with giant-sized Play-Doh extrusions ceramicists can create forms that would be nearly impossible using traditional processes.
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By tweaking the software what are typically thought of as manufacturing "errors" become decorative patterns reminiscent of baskets, lace, and fishscales.
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The result is a collection of designs featuring forms not typically seen in ceramics, including tightly crenellated profiles.
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All deposition-based 3-D printers have a tell-tale layer pattern, but by slightly altering the path of the printhead, stunningly detailed patterns emerge on a pot's surface.
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Paradoxiclly, by leveraging a robot's unique capabilities, ceramicists have more freedom to experiment and create designs with swoops, wings, and other features that would be difficult to build with coils and impossible to produce on a wheel.
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Some experiments accentuate the layers, but van Herpt also tested treating the clay with chemicals that would enable smoother surface finishes to be produced.
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Some elements of the machine, like the extruder, are driven entirely by the physics of 3-D printing clay and the process limitations of CNC fabrication.
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The clay formulation is another variable that can be experimented with—adding water to the clay produces finer surfaces, thicker clays make larger vessels, and pigments can be added to the mix to create dynamic color patterns.
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Originally a graffiti artist, van Herpt tries to bring random elements into tightly controlled environments, for instance, by adding glitches to the software that add a wild crown to an otherwise sedate coil pot.
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Van Herpt's software borrows best practices from other types of 3-D printers. The reinforcing matrix seen inside some of these pots is a technique borrowed from the MakerBot.
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Balancing the power of the extruder's motor and syringe and the thickness of the clay, determined the size of the objects that can be produced.
