Project 1: Vessel

Objective

The purpose of this project was to create clay-coiled vessel, create a 3D scan, and incorporate 3D printing into the final product.

Clay Sculpting

The purpose of using the clay-coil technique was to mimic the FDM 3D printing process of extruding layers of filament on top of each other. In my piece, I wanted to incorporate curves within the layers, which most FDM 3D printers do not do. This half of the piece shows aspects of physical models that 3D printers cannot replace yet.

3D Scanning

A scan of the clay model was generated using the Artec Space Spider. This created an impressively detailed 3D model of my clay vessel.

3D Modeling

I used the Form tool in Fusion 360 to create my model. I then transformed it into a mesh and perform a boolean subtraction operation on it to imprint the vessel lip profile onto the 3D object. The downside to the high-resolution scan was that the boolean operation took 30 minutes to complete.

3D Print

I printed the model in black and transparent PLA to demonstrate the modularity of this object. I prefer the look of the transparent filament because it shows off more of the artifacts from 3D printing like the infill pattern.

What I think is interesting about the 3D printed half of this piece is that I can print infinitely many copies of this piece, but they will only fit to one clay half.