Ceramic Mould Making Process

The shaw process and the unicast process.

Ceramic mould making process.

The pores in the mold create a capillary pressure because of this the water in the slip is absorbed by the mold. Not only does ceramic mold making enable you to repeat a form over and over again it also makes individual forms lose their preciousness which frees you up to experiment more. These casting processes are commonly used to make tooling especially drop forging dies but also injection molding dies die casting dies glass molds stamping dies and extrusion dies. Ceramic mold casting also known ambiguously as ceramic molding is a group of metal casting processes that use ceramics as the mold material.

In this excerpt from the march 2019 issue of ceramics monthly jackie head takes you through the plaster mold making process from making a prototype to pouring the plaster mold. There are two types of ceramic mold casting. While it was once thought of as cheating using ceramic molds is a technique that is increasing in popularity among potters these days. The forms can then be repeated and each one individualized through surface decoration and glazing.

The process i developed includes sketching using drafting software making models with mdf then making plaster molds from those models. In this method ceramic particles are suspended in water an cast into porous plater molds. From simple one piece plaster molds to more complex multi part molds plaster mold making allows the potter the freedom to experiment with ideas for form and surface because it takes away a bit of the preciousness of a one of a kind wheel thrown pot. Milling raw material procurement the raw materials used in the process are milled materials typically found in mining sites that have been reduced from a large size to smaller sizes or even in some cases pulverized depending upon the end product.

It is a combination of plaster mold casting and investment casting. In order to create these end products the ceramic matter needs to go through the traditional manufacturing process which goes as follows.