Harvard is ushering in the rise of the ceramic machines. Don’t panic yet, the video linked to this post is just a experimental process, not a product-making exercise.
The Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers’ Association along with the Harvard University Graduate School of Design are working with the university’s robotics group, its ceramics program and its fabrication laboratory to develop systems of digital and robot-aided ceramic production. The goal is to develop a form of high-volume industrial production by using these machines. In the video we can see robot arms attempting everything from extrusion, to carving, to shaping clay on a wheel. We’ll leave critiques of their work up to you, the reader, but this is clearly an interesting direction for the field.
Above image: A screenshot of a robotic arm shaping clay on a wheel. Video by Nathan King.
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Visit the Robotics Design Group at Harvard
Visit the Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers’ Association
Much of this work was done in the Fall of 2013 in collaboration with the Ceramics Program at Harvard as a lab. A presentation on how we collaborated with the instructors and provided material knowledge to the GSD students will be presented at the 2015 NCECA Conference in Providence.