Hello all,

I had a nice chat with @T3P3Tony at the East Coast RepRap Festival this past weekend, but unfortunately a laptop issue prevented me from demonstrating the printer. I thought I'd share a few links about this experimental effort, for Tony and anyone else who might be curious about clay extrusion.

I've been very focused on trying to see if clay can match FDM polymer printing in terms of resolution and form complexity. After a few years of work nothing has convinced me this is untrue, though there are some areas where things have gotten difficult.

So here are some links relating to high resolution (in the context of extrusion) clay printing:

• Here is an example of printing with a 0.9mm nozzle at 0.4mm layer heights with a clay that I dug out of my backyard and sifted through some screens to achieve a fine texture.

• Here's the highest resolution I've been able to achieve, a 0.5mm nozzle at 0.25mm layer heights

• Here's a buttery smooth porcelain via a 1mm nozzle

• Here's a time lapse showing the ability to print significant overhangs

• Here's an early attempt at dual color clay extrusion using a pair of chunky 3mm nozzles

I've built a small one and a larger version with two extruders

The print nozzles I'm using are cake frosting tips, which have been great to work with - cheap, stainless steel, easy to replace. The best cake frosting tips I can find have come from the UK, like the Duet itself.

I'm an artist/teacher using this for art purposes, but also interested lately in architectural possibilities. Some finished objects can be seen here.

This is an open source project but also very much a work-in-progress. Thanks for checking it out if you made it this far!

Many thanks again to everyone on the forum who helped me get this two color "teeter totter" clay printer going. I thought I'd share some images. Printer runs on a Duet Wifi with Duex5 expansion board and PanelDue7. It's running 8 Nema 23 motors - X, Y, two Z's, and 4 extruder motors (two tools with two motors each). It is built out of aluminum components from OpenBuilds, and builds on several years of constant experimentation.

@supraguy Many thanks! Yes, the pieces get fired, glazed, etc. We use typical clay you might use for pottery making or sculpture from our ceramic studio. The material is incredibly cheap, so we are looking at scaling up a lot. No problems with trapped air - usually those issues in clay have more to do with excessively thick clay that is unable to dry properly. With printing we can be super specific about wall thickness. If you are interested here's a bunch of objects made with this tool: link text . . . and a forum with tons of info on clay printing: link text

Many thanks again!

@deckingman Yes, Delft clay is well known worldwide, beautiful stuff. A lot of the porcelain we use here in the states is also of UK origin, so we always curse the shipping cost. Probably the best porcelains in the world are in China, but maybe the brightest white clay in the world comes from New Zealand and is a type called Halloysite.
That said, I don't always prefer porcelain. Simple red terracotta clay can be found anywhere in the world (I think) and is wonderful stuff to work with.
Its a lot like filaments I guess, and maybe porcelain is like some exotic nylon that is difficult to print, but terracotta is like PLA (if PLA had a 30,000 year history of use). Not a perfect analogy!

@DocTrucker Hello all, and thanks to @T3P3Tony for the shout out. I'm doing clay printing just about every day, using a dual syringe printer. However, my refilling process is quite straightforward compared to what is proposed here. I pause the print, retract the syringe, insert a fresh tube of clay, extrude a bit to prime the nozzle, and return to printing. If I do this quickly it doesn't show in the print. If I get distracted and make the switch slowly, the object being printed shrinks a little and the first fresh layer stands a bit proud of the others.
In these pandemic times I have been documenting what I do more vis video rather than in the classroom (I'm a teacher (of Art)). So if anyone cares to see some clay printing fairly up close with the occasional explanation of process/material/art etc. have a look here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeyNCJtCUtwsq2dWv26BmRA

Thanks Phadrux,
I'm back home now and to my relief the Duet board is just fine. It is indeed a Windows issue that might be somewhat specific to the particular Surface I'm using. I suspect the 1(!) USB port my surface has is somewhat damaged.

At any rate, lesson learned, always have a plan B.

I'll say this is solved, even though some Windows issue remains, but that would be for a Windows forum somewhere to solve.

Now . . . back to printing as usual.

@Phaedrux many thanks all, I was able to get this up and running by following the guidance provided here. Cheers!

If anyone experiences the same issue, I was able to get past it by reverting to Duet Web Control 1 and uploading in that interface, rather than in Duet Web Control 2.

@dc42 Ah, I see. Well, that changes everything. Many thanks again.

@deckingman Thanks for your interest! I'm using a mechanical syringe with an auger assist at the printhead. Put another way, there is an extremely powerful piston which displaces the clay out of the nozzle. This is coupled with an auger screw which regulates the flow rate of that displacement. (Hope that makes sense!) Its a fully mechanical system, no air compression - and all of it controlled by the Duet.

One could try and heat the clay as it exits, but clay does shrink as it dries, and uneven, rapid drying is the principle cause of warping and cracking. So, one would have to apply heat carefully. Personally I think it will be easier to design and print a combustible support material than to rapidly dry the clay as it is bridging.

@Phaedrux many thanks all, I was able to get this up and running by following the guidance provided here. Cheers!

@Phaedrux Thanks again, I hadn't seen that guide before, will dig into this

@Phaedrux I have not, will try that, thanks

Re: How to connect directly to Duet Ethernet with Ethernet Cable?

Hello all, I hate to revisit an old and boring topic, but I'm struggling mightily to connect directly to my Duet 2 Ethernet with an ethernet crossover cable going from the Duet right to the desktop.

I installed YAT and went through the various posted steps. I have the following settings at the moment:

Any help anyone might share would be greatly appreciated
I had used the Duet wifi successfully for years but moved the printer to a location where I can't connect to wifi directly, so I am trying to switch to the Duet ethernet.

@DocTrucker Hello all, and thanks to @T3P3Tony for the shout out. I'm doing clay printing just about every day, using a dual syringe printer. However, my refilling process is quite straightforward compared to what is proposed here. I pause the print, retract the syringe, insert a fresh tube of clay, extrude a bit to prime the nozzle, and return to printing. If I do this quickly it doesn't show in the print. If I get distracted and make the switch slowly, the object being printed shrinks a little and the first fresh layer stands a bit proud of the others.
In these pandemic times I have been documenting what I do more vis video rather than in the classroom (I'm a teacher (of Art)). So if anyone cares to see some clay printing fairly up close with the occasional explanation of process/material/art etc. have a look here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeyNCJtCUtwsq2dWv26BmRA

OK, so I added "M575 P1 B57600 S1" as @Phaedrux suggested, and everything is working great now, problem appears to be fully solved. I'll stop wasting your time now (I hope). Many thanks, this forum is remarkable.

Ok, so I have to admit something really dumb. There had been a power surge or something and my wifi router had been knocked offline. I had not noticed this because I was working on a desktop computer with an ethernet connection that was unaffected. I rebooted the router and now I can see DWC in the browser and I can print, etc.

All is more or less normal . . . except . . . on the PanelDue it does still read "connecting" in the upper right hand corner.
The console in DWC shows that I have successfully connected, the console in the PanelDue does not show this.

@Phaedrux I do not have "M575 P1 B57600 S1" in my config, should I?

Apologies for really tripping over my own feet over here. Thanks again.

I recently updated my Duet wifi to firmware 3.1 and was using it last night no problem. I also updated Duet Web Control to version 3.1. And this was working last night. Came in this morning and turned the machine and it just says "Connecting . . . " forever, without actually connecting. I have looked at threads about this connecting hangup but they reference older versions of firmware so I'm a little lost. I can connect via USB/YAT just fine. Tried a few things with YAT, even got YAT to say it was connected, but when I try and access via browser it never loads, just a blank screen.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, feeling noob-y having these hanging issues two days in a row.

@dc42 Sounds correct, I was using the new MS Edge browser, which is based on Chrome. @Phaedrux I am reluctant to mess with it presently as I need to keep the printer printing, and as @dc42 seems to have already addressed this in 3.1.1.
Just out of curiosity, is Firefox the preferred browser for DWC? I am not particularly wedded to any browser and am happy to use whatever gets priority from the development team.

Thanks again!

If anyone experiences the same issue, I was able to get past it by reverting to Duet Web Control 1 and uploading in that interface, rather than in Duet Web Control 2.