Homemade Clay Extruder and Dies!

While I have been working on the throwing, cutting and joining I have also been designing extrusion dies on rhino5 in order to make my own handles and spouts. I made an extruder from a mastik gun and an empty tube of silicone sealer. I did this by cutting some of the end out leaving a flange to stop the wooden dies and create a seal. I then rmoved the plunger and attached it to the rod on the mastik gun.

Once drawn on rhino and formatted on coral draw I cut my dies using a laser cutter. This worked amazingly well and allowed me absolute precision. The dies fit into the silicone tube perfectly and work really well!

The only problems I encountered were that most of the actual extrusion shapes were either too big or too small as it was difficult when drawing them to envisage the final size once cut. This is something I can fix through trial and error. Another problem was that the way I designed the two layer die for a spout meant that the clay did not have enough space left to rejoin on exit resulting in two strands of curly extrusions. This is something that requires a little more thought to perfect.

 

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