ArtClay silver/gold/copper clay

Hi,

I have been toying with idea of getting printed metal parts with ArtClay.
There is a variant of ArtClay that can be diluted with water to wanted consitency.

650 Paste type

The only difference between Paste type and Clay type is the amount of water portion in the mixture. Paste type comes in the consistency of melted ice cream and you should only transfer the amount needed from the jar to a small tray and dilute with water to create desired thickness. It is used in several ways:
●As a glue to join two piece of dry or wet clay together.
●As a gap-filler for pits and cracks that appear in dried pieces.
●To attach silver findings (screw eyes, bailbacks, brooch findings, etc.) to dried or wet clay pieces. During firing, the normal contraction of the clay bonds the findings.
●When applied in separate layers onto organic forms such as leaves, dried flowers, paper-origami, etc, the Paste type creates a perfect impression of the form.

Taken from: [www.artclay.co.jp]

... 8 to 9 percents shrinkage sounds needing a complex calculating and after-treatment for fabbing fitting geometries

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Viktor
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atorox's a very good idea (and it's been brought before 2-3 times), but no one's tried it.

Economically, it makes more sense to do waxes and then send the wax to the local silver or gold foundry in town that serves all your local jewelers.

But in terms of RepRap, we need to try it to improve the state of the art, because we're hackers and toolmakers, and we're not in a service relationship with technology, we make things, so to hell with economics.

Plus maybe we can do enamels too.

Old notes:
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VDX Wrote:
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> ... 8 to 9 percents shrinkage sounds needing a
> complex calculating and after-treatment for
> fabbing fitting geometries

Yup that can bee a problem and for multipart constructions would need some fitting and tooling. But I think that with several test runs some basic rules for calculating close enough right size can bee found.

My mendel is still in pieces around the world ;-) but if/when I have mine up and running I think this would be one thing to try.

I ran across this today.

Their clays might be a bit solid for a pneumatic extruder such as the one that makerbot sells, but you wouldn't have to deal with it slumping.

The other problem is that their shrinkage is much higher than artclay - 20 to 25%

What temperatures are needed to bake/cure? I see that some want a kiln and others do not. What variations are they representing?

Could you blow hot enough air through an empty hot end nozzle to bake on the spot?

I am picturing a multi-headed system that can:

- back out plastic from hot-end in extruder #1
- deposit the metal clay from extruder #2
- blow controlled compressed air can(?) through hot end onto metal until set .. microbursts?
- re-feed/resume plastic printing from extruder #1

Would not get hot enough for the kiln requirement. Maybe a lower powered laser reaches kiln temperatures without crazy SLS power requirements?

Would probably want an IR thermometer designed into the hot extruder for monitoring.. object/surface temp.