Jeff Lawrence on fri 24 feb 12
Hi Ben,
A large expense is the tooling to produce your working molds - both
the blades you make and a plaster forming system that's precisely
fitted to the spinning bowl that holds production molds. None of the
sizes are cheap, and I got badly stung when Ratcliffe went bust with
my advance payment for their largest size in pocket.
I made serving bowl sets but none of my employees ever got the knack
of it. But even with just me, it was a good way to crank out blanks -
just make sure you like the shape because only surface changes are
practical. And, as Ric and Lil both noted, the molds take up a lot of
room. That's a LOT of room. And I had 6000 square feet.
If you're technically astute, know mold-making, and groove on surface
variation, it's a delightful technology, but you should wangle a visit
to a shop that's doing it before you plunge in. In Monument Colorado,
Rick Pankratz does a lot of jiggering and there's a local outfit,
Rainbow Gate in Santa Fe that does popular work and good business with
jolly-jiggering:
http://rainbowgate.com/About_Us/index.html
And some of my favorite surfaces are on Bill Campbell's pottery, much
of which is jiggered or pressed and fired to cone 11 or 12:
http://www.campbellpotterystore.com/
Good luck,
Jeff Lawrence
relapsing ceramist
Greg Relaford on fri 24 feb 12
The various threads on this topic got me to thinking about mold making
options. When I worked in the core room of a steel foundry, my first 'real
job', the molds were machined metal and wood. Very labor intensive to make.
In some ways the molds for clay must be similar.
However, today you could potentially get a CAD design and use a 3D printer
to make the positive (or negative) for creating a mold. It's getting
cheaper every year to do this. Has anyone looked into this?
Greg Relaford
On Feb 24, 2012 9:18 AM, "Jeff Lawrence" wrote:
> Hi Ben,
>
> A large expense is the tooling to produce your working molds - both
> the blades you make and a plaster forming system that's precisely
> fitted to the spinning bowl that holds production molds. None of the
> sizes are cheap, and I got badly stung when Ratcliffe went bust with
> my advance payment for their largest size in pocket.
>
> I made serving bowl sets but none of my employees ever got the knack
> of it. But even with just me, it was a good way to crank out blanks -
> just make sure you like the shape because only surface changes are
> practical. And, as Ric and Lil both noted, the molds take up a lot of
> room. That's a LOT of room. And I had 6000 square feet.
>
> If you're technically astute, know mold-making, and groove on surface
> variation, it's a delightful technology, but you should wangle a visit
> to a shop that's doing it before you plunge in. In Monument Colorado,
> Rick Pankratz does a lot of jiggering and there's a local outfit,
> Rainbow Gate in Santa Fe that does popular work and good business with
> jolly-jiggering:
> http://rainbowgate.com/About_Us/index.html
> And some of my favorite surfaces are on Bill Campbell's pottery, much
> of which is jiggered or pressed and fired to cone 11 or 12:
> http://www.campbellpotterystore.com/
>
> Good luck,
> Jeff Lawrence
> relapsing ceramist
>
Jeff Lawrence on fri 24 feb 12
Greg wrote:
> However, today you could potentially get a CAD design and use a 3D printe=
r
> to make the positive (or negative) for creating a mold. It's getting chea=
per
> every year to do this. Has anyone looked into this?
>
> Greg Relaford
Hey Greg,
I agree that 3-D printing has great promise - I looked into doing it
for mold masters (to make production molds) a while back, when
stereo-lithography was the reigning technology. It was far cheaper to
do it the old-fashioned way then (like one tenth the cost) but you
may be onto something cost-effective now,
Jeff
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