World’s Largest Polar Ceramic 3D Printer

Above:  10mm nozzle extruding pug-milled clay.

Working with Tina Piracci, with the design help of Ryan Morin, Lloyd Hartline, Luis Huertas, and Richard Solomon, we ran what is believed to be at the time of construction the world’s largest polar ceramic 3D printer.  This is a theta type printer which addresses space in continuous cylinder coordinate space.  The machine was extremely challenging due to the scaling of the parts and the amount of post-design work and tuning required to make it work.  Tina’s dedication along with Ryan’s design skills came through resulting in a successful final thesis project.  Detail and a video of the printer in operation can be seen through the link below.  This was the 4th major student project I oversaw.

http://news.usf.edu/article/templates/?a=7860&z=220