Clay 3D Printing in Whoville

Clay 3D printing multi-textured cups inspired by the wacky aesthetic of Dr. Seuss’ fictional town, Whoville.

Software: CoilCAM, Rhino 7, Grasshopper, SketchPath

Hardware: Potterbot Micro

Whoville features many curves, loops and swirls. It is rare that you’ll find a straight line or a simple shape. Objects also include excess materials in the form of a third roof, a fifth handle or even a tenth door. Both of these characteristics feel almost incongruous with many of the fabrication tools we’ve encountered thus far. 

In my brief personal experience, clay 3D printing has provided the most creative freedom before, during and after fabrication. It also allows for additional manipulation throughout the process, allowing the artist to further push the limits of what it is capable of.

Finally, since childhood, I have always been infatuated with the people, objects and worlds constructed by Dr. Seuss.  I was excited to have a reason to explore this aesthetic.

*** Sam Bourgault's recent CoilCAM-created objects (pictured above) prompted this idea. Although she had little familiarity with the Whoville aesthetic, I feel that these pieces exemplify the fun, curved, decorative ideas that I am interested in. ***

Goals:

• Designing a single cup that appears to be three stacked on top of each other.
• Despite this appearance, liquid should be able to fill the height of the object. Thus, only the bottom cup will have a base.
• Each cup should have a distinct design and texture.
• Each cup will have a handle that is properly attached after print.
• The entire cup should be the size of a large drinking glass (pictured).
• Each cup should be glazed a different color.

Using Sam's tree file as a starting point, I modified the program to design 3 separate cups with differing surface textures and sizes.

Design Notes:

** From here on out, I will refer to the loops featured on the surface of the cups as "gloops." **

• Top Cup- This is where one's mouth would go. The texture should be relatively simple, with no gloops.
• Middle Cup- This is where one would hold as they drink. The texture should have fewer gloops and smoother than the bottom.
• Bottom Cup- This is the busiest texture featuring many gloops.
• Base- I forgot to design a base in CoilCAM. Instead, I added a slab over the canvas and printed on top of that.

Once the final cup finished printing, I carved out the base of the third cup. I then assembled the pieces together by scoring the areas where they overlapped, brushing slip (a water + clay mixture) over the score and pushing them together.

Process 1 Reflection:

• Once I joined the top cup with the rest, the object began to collapse. The added weight, along with my unsteady hands, was clearly the cause.
• Due to the collapse, this is not watertight.
• I did not attempt any handles with this print, choosing to focus on the other aspects of the design.
• It was difficult to assemble the cups in a way that appeared 'lopsided' like my original design concept because each successive cup would need to be slightly larger than the previous one so that all of the walls touch even at an angle.
• This doesn't look like a cup, nor does it look like 3 cups placed together.
• I really like the change in texture that happens with the top cup.
• Nevertheless, I am happy with this print. I think it will make a cute vase for my Lego flowers.

Here, I diverged from my original design and used SkCAM to design one cup with three different textures. I tried to replicate the textures from the CoilCam print while achieving an intentional lopsidedness.

Design Notes:

• I designed a base in SkCAM.
• After about 25 layers, I changed the path and, subsequently, the texture of the following cup.
• Inspired by the handle pictured above, I also extruded a couple of clay ropes in a straight line beyond the cup, hoping to connect the base to the cup during fabrication.
• To achieve a lopsided appearance, I designed a couple of semicircle layers that would mark the transition between each cup. I then drew a completed circle on top of these so that one side of the cup would always be higher than the other, giving the appearance that the cup is slightly inside the previous.
• This was 78 layers in total.

Process 2 Reflection:

• As a whole, each cup blended into the next much more than with P1. P1 certainly had more distinct textures for each cup.
• My semicircle idea didn't really work.
• In printing the semicircle for the second cup, I manually removed the bridging and then allowed the full circle to print on top of the full shape. However, despite having the same radius, the clay struggled to land over the full diameter of the previous cup.
• To combat this, I left the bridging on the third cup to see if it would have a better time recovering. It did, but then it became difficult to remove this bridging without messing up the above layers.
• Due to the extra fumbling with the machine, this is not watertight.
• I stopped the print when it was 70% complete so that it would not collapse where it was lopsided.
• The handles don't look like handles. With all of the other things I was juggling, they fell on the back burner. I decided that I would stop worrying about handles for the rest of this project.
• I still like the object. It just looks more like a small basket than a cup.

Returning to my original CoilCAM prints, I decided to print each cup again, this time on top of the previous one.

Process 3 Reflection:

• Method 1: Merging the cups in Grasshopper and creating 1 Gcode file.
• I designed a base in CoilCAM and merged it with the bottom cup.
• I then tried to merge the second cup using the same operation. However, this crashed both my and Sam's computers (who opened it to see if my computer was the issue... it clearly was not).
• This happened because the merge operation was not returning a flattened output. Instead, it was putting two separate objects in a file one after the other. Thus, when many objects were merged, it created a very large path that crashed computers.
• Method 2: Having 3 separate Gcode files and prints without moving the canvas.
• Deciding not to focus on merging the objects, I attempted to print the object using 3 Gcode files. This immediately failed for two reasons:
• There was an error in my program. Despite changing the starting z position of each cup, it was not being incorporated into the Gcode. As a result, the machine was running into my piece.
• Each Gcode file begins by centering the machine and lowering the z position to 20 mm. Rather than deleting the line entirely, I just changed the height to a couple of millimeters above the cup.
• Note: I analyzed the Gcode a lot during this step, and I now feel much more comfortable with the whole process.
• I stopped this print before finishing the first cup and threw the clay back in the bag but incorporated these notes into my next print.

I continued to leave the 3 objects separate and printed 3 projects right on top of each other.

Process 4 Reflection:

• The second and third cups were slightly off-center. This was due to an error that occurred right after I centered the object in my program. I fixed it before the final print.
• I stopped the print halfway through the top cup out of fear that the slight decentering would cause it to collapse.
• This is not watertight because the final cups were off-center.
• This print was relatively smooth. I am generally happy with the outcome. Although, it feels less like a cup and more like an extravagant vase. This is generally in the right direction.

I was generally pleased with my previous print, and after a few modifications, I was ready to make one final print. I also received peer feedback during this stage. Those comments are in bold.

Design Notes:

• I swapped the middle and top cups so that there could be a more distinct change in texture.
• I also think the middle cup has the most preferred texture for your mouth to come into contact with.
• It will be nice to see the density of the patterns decrease as you go up the cup.
• I removed the gloops from the middle and top cups so that each cup has a more distinct texture.
• I decreased the size of the entire cup. I realized I was modeling this off of a 15-oz cup, which is much larger than I intended. This has contributed to the fact that none of my previous prints look like cups. Instead, I scaled it down to the size of a 10-oz cup.
• The difference between these prints and the inspiration picture of 3 stacked cups is that there's a little gap between the next cup and the previous one. Maybe incorporating that gap will be more effective in conveying the illusion.
• Although I did not pursue this idea, I do believe it is the key to capturing my original idea.
• Downsizing should also help it look more like a cup. The current prints are much larger than standard cups.

Process 5 Reflection:

• The final adjustments I made to each cup's position worked perfectly.
• The middle cup blends into the bottom cup much more than expected.
• If I were to do it again with my original intention, I might swap the middle and top cups back.
• Although, I like having the current texture at the top if I were to drink from this.
• I would have the opening be a bit wider at the top of the cup as well.
• I think this print diverged completely from the 3 cups in 1 idea, but I am quite happy with the outcome.
• I feel more inclined to call this a cup. However, after it has been fired, this opening may be too small to comfortably drink from without a straw. Likely, I will not use this as a cup.

To complete the project, I used underglaze on all of the pieces. I used two to three colors for each piece so that they maintained my original whimsical aesthetic.