I’ve never understood the fascination with pottery wheels—it seems labor intensive and imprecise. I also limits you to things that have cylindrical symmetry (although I suppose you could use a mechanical lathing mechanism like in wood turning…). Instead, I’m much more interested in slip casting…

Books

Martin, The Essential Guide to Mold Making and Slip Casting

Youtube videos

A great discovery that I made during this exploration was the VanTiki youtube channel. Who knew that you could make a small business out of custom tiki mugs? But in addition, he has a great series of explanations

How Slipcasting Works (19:20) – clear explanation of the process at a microscopic and macroscopic level
- Part of the Ceramic and Slip Casting How ToPlaylist which provides an overveiw of making slip, the above video, and mold making
- He’s also got a super detailed, multi-hour 7 part series on making a slipcast mug from start to production. Start here…

Just want to try the process?

Just getting started and don’t want to design an object. Just use a silicone baking mold and you can jump directly to some elementary plaster mold making and slipcasting.

But what about 3d-printing?

You can use your FDM printer to make the postives for your slipcasting projects!
- Example of making a positive then casting in plaster — one thing that is important is to sand your positive model to get rid of the layer lines; you can also spray with laquer/polyurethane for additional smoothing
Or even cooler—you can make a mold for the plaster directly(!)—just make the design, along with the indexing notches and be done with it; no need for cottle boards, etc.
- Example mug—print an exterior form into which you pour the plaster which will form the typical two part mold.
- Example ear cup mug — the idea here to to make a cylindrical vase-mode style mold into which you will pour the plaster; print without top and bottom. In the end, you destroy the 3d print to release the plaster.
- In either case, the basic workflow in F360 is to make your postive model, then subtract it from the mold housing, then use a plane to cut the housing, then add indexing notches for aligning the two pieces.
In either case, just use good old fashioned Murphy’s Oil Soap as the mold release

Other resources

IUS Ceramics – website with many resources on ceramics and glazing, including casting
Colorado School of Mines and Alfred University (about 5 hours north of NYC) offer degree programs in ceramic engineering

Parerga and Paralipomena

Slab casting is another way in which you 3d print the (negative) mold, coat the mold in cornstarch, then press in clay and let it dry…no plaster mold required.