{Note: 17 Feb, 2010 – for Boing Boing visitors who apparently read an entry today on 3D printing of ceramic material, it’s actually not a new development. In fact, Ceramics Monthly did a whole issue on the topic of 3D printing ceramics a year ago (Link).

Bowling Green researchers Sebastien Dion and John Balistreri were, to my knowledge, the first people to 3D print ceramic materials back in 2006 (Link); using a modified ZCorp printer, if I’m not mistaken. I think I posted something here about it – or maybe I just saved the link to my Del.icio.us account – but yesterday’s headline on Boing Boing, “3D printing comes to ceramics”, is very misleading. Bruce Sterling more accurately reports “A RepRap printing in clay” (Link), which is probably a first for that particular effort. Some one should tell Doctorow to post better headlines.}

{Note: 1 Sep, 2008 – for the Sterling readers surfing through from Instructables, you’re almost certainly going to find these of interest: latest news on house “printing” and a ZBrush forum thread showing/explaining someone’s custom jewelry operation (both by way of my Twitter account, where I now post quick news bits; this blog is now for deeper discussion on such topics.)}

{Note: Oct 24, 2006 – for all the Make: visitors, you might want to do a search here on “reprap“. There’s more going on that just this thing. Cheers.}

In memory of the original “RepRap” entry lost in the Spam War earlier, I present a small update. Vik Olliver has submitted images of his device pictured here.

From his Listserv entries:

I’ve constructed a prototype turntable from Meccano that automatically lowers itself up to 60mm, currently at 0.75mm per revolution though this can be changed. This is intended for use in experiments in continuously
extruding recycled HDPE…

Recent fabrications include a 18mm high 19mm diameter cylinder with 0.85mm walls, and a 13mm high 43mm diameter cylinder with 1.75mm walls. Each layer is 0.25mm thick. It’s fascinating to watch in the same way as a potter is, at work on their wheel.

Maybe we can get him to post a short video clip. Industrial designers as well as all glue gun user’s the world over would probably love it. Nice.