SERPENTINE 3D PRINTER - DATA CLAY EXHIBITION

There's been a bevy of research into 3D printing clay in recent years, to which we strove to contribute to with the Serpentine Clay Printer project, as well as with student research in Jason's Creative Architecture Machines studios (2013, 2014) at CCA. The latest update to this research is a part of exhibition Data Clay: Digital Strategies For Parsing The Earth at the Museum of Craft and Design, for which we constructed our own 37" long, 28" wide, 20" tall 3D print gantry (nearly 12 cubic feet). Building on the previous clay research we developed a new clay polymer recipe and new print algorithms optimized for stabilizing the clay slip. In addition to these innovations we developed a machine vision system using Firefly / Grasshopper that allowed us to control our valves and release air bubbles on-the-fly.