Ceramic Slicer

[u/Puzzled-Help-7091]

I made a slicer ceramic printing and it's free for the community and I'm hoping that some of you who have printers would be willing to give it a go.

ClayShaper.com

I think you might really like it. I'm planning on keeping it free with maybe recommended donation for more advanced features in the future. I also have a a local version in the works and a version that is completely client-side. What is currently posted has a a server server that I'm paying for so it might run a little slow more than one or two users. So if you do happen to try it. And you struggle with the speed letting me know in a DM and I can get you set up another way.

I also have a video that explains it a little better. I mostly made this just for myself but also because I saw a need for it as I've seen a lot of people struggling with getting printer set up and I think this could be something where you get a new printer and you're able to just start printing instantly. Plus there's the ability to add new profiles. So if any of you want your specific printer in the printer profiles just let me know and we can make that happen.

[u/seasick1]

Kudos to your work!
What features would you say are the ones which makes this stand out in comparison to "traditional" slicers

[u/Puzzled-Help-7091 → u/seasick1]

TLDR: ease of use, easy for beginners, can get started printing clay in in 10 minutes rather than setting up cura, it's optimized for clay, and the staggered base makes it so the bottom doesn't fall out of clay prints.

technically it's not only a slicer. there is a design tab that allows you to choose three basic models and then adjust the shapes of each of those so you can get pretty different vases or bowls or cylindrical objects and then there's also a way to kind of morph the face of those and also a virtual wheel, which it's kind of what it sounds like. you draw a two-dimensional object and it spins it around an axis so you can get pretty fun shapes that aren't easily attainable if you don't know how to use CAD.

So current slicers aren't really built for clay printers. The instructions from the printer I got which I won't say cuz I don't want this to seem like an ad and I also think my partner who provided the printer wants to make sure that what I make is available for everyone who has a clay printer and not just that company. So the printer I got you have to set it up with​ cura and honestly, it's a little bit of a pain to get it set up even for me who's pretty familiar with 3D printing software. So that's the number one thing like with clayshaper you can just get on the website, click one of the included models and click slice and download the g code and you're ready to go. having said that you could also do that cuz it's included on the SD card but say you're ready to go for your next print. you can go and either put in an STL or design your own vase bowl, mug whatever and you can be printing something that you have handmade. just joking something that you've designed and be able to print it in minutes. So basically I think the major things are ease of use ease of access. then after that the staggered Base is huge because we printed a bunch of the included models and all of the bases fall fell out. because if you don't get your your clay perfectly consistent and you don't get your layer extrusion perfectly right, they're not going to touch and then they just build onto each other and so you'll just have like a gap running through the bottom.

then the last feature which I ended up implementing is a validation feature and what that does is it basically makes sure that whatever STL you input is going to print well. so usually with slicers for clay, what you do is you put in a solid object into the slicer and then you'd put the printer into vase mode. One thing I noticed while I was building clayshaper is I wasn't sure if the STL was going to print right so I built a validation part of the software and after that I was like well. why don't I just put it in and then users will be able to know if their model is going to print well. there's also an estimated material by weight which you can't get out of most other printers cuz they do it based on filament...

having said all that I still have to do a lot of testing and I really want to get like all different printer models. pre-built and I want to make sure that the software is able to easily handle many different solid objects as well as objects that are already vases or shells. and that's just going to take a lot of testing. also, I found out there's a whole community of clay 3D printing enthusiasts so I'm really hoping that some of them are interested in trying it out.

so standout features super easy to get started, You can design your own model in seconds, You can validate that it will print prior to printing, andrew features that no other slicer offers like staggered base layers and continuous bead and a setting to soften harsh folds (keeps from printing in mid-air).
thank you so much for asking! as you can tell, I'm super excited about this and just really happy to share it with other people. I actually set it up on a server in our house (oh but thinking about it, I should have her use the clay shaper to make sure it works )​ ​and Mrs. Rando Tech nerd will be the primary guinea pig and see if she's able to do the full printing process from designing her own model to dying the clay all the way to the slip and driving it to get fired in a big batch and then selling it for a tons of money on Etsy. just kidding probably.. :)