Laser Pottery

Master's Thesis in experimental digital ceramic fabrication using a laser

2017, Columbia University

My Master’s Thesis project for Dr. Shree Nayar at Columbia University. This project combines laser cutting and engraving with traditional pottery techniques to create a unique new technical approach to ceramics.

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Motivation

Handmade ceramics are inerrently non-uniform. The nature of the ceramic handbuilding process means that a conventional rotary laser etcher will cause the piece to come in and out of focus with the etching laser as it rotates. By 3d scanning the piece first, we can actuate the laser to keep it perfectly in focus on the surface of the workpiece.

This process can be most clearly seen in the video below, where the laser head is clearly wobbling to follow the curve of the piece

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Process

The laser pottery process involves:

So the whole
unwrapping and uv-mapping the scans to enable 2d graphics overlays
rendering the 2d design onto the ceramic surface using a CO2 laser cutter

One of the moset fascinating discoveries of this exploration was the ability to use laser ablation to cut away clay, or underglaze,

Laser Ablation of clay etches away material from the surface, which can later be filled with underglaze.
Laser Ablation of underglaze painted on the surface creates negative images!
Laser Sintering of underglaze painted on the surface creates positive images!

Examples of the three techniques are shown below. The second example shows how a dithering pattern can be used to simulate greyscale. Laser sintering didn’t produce a high level of detail on the test tiles and wasn’t included in the tests on actual pottery.

Laser ablation of bisque fired clay

Laser ablation of underglazed paint, with dithering

Laser Sintering tests on flat tiles

What I learned from this project:

Hardware hacking! Figuring out how to bypass the laser cutter controller to trigger the laser was eyeopeningly simple and fun.
3D scanning (cause the base of the project involved building and programming a 3D scanner)
Blender and Meshlab for 3D modeling and rendering
The importance of creating a research story.. instead of just creating a cool machine