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Concept
Slip casting
Summary
Slip casting, or slipcasting, is a ceramic forming technique, and is widely used for shapes that can not easily be formed by other techniques. The technique involves a clay body slip, usually prepared in a blunger, being poured into plaster moulds and allowed to form a layer, the cast, on the internal walls of the mould.
It is suited for the consistent and precise shaping of complex shapes. It is the standard shaping technique for sanitaryware, such as toilets and basins, and is commonly used for smaller pieces like figurines and teapots.
The technique was first developed in China during the Tang dynasty (618–917), but was relatively little used in China until recent times. It seems to have been reinvented independently in England around 1745 "reputedly by Ralph Daniels of Corbridge", and before long was widely used by European porcelain manufacturers, and then becoming the main forming technique for sanitaryware by the end of the century.
Solid casting is used to produce solid articles, such as cup handles; for this the mould frequently includes a reservoir of excess slip. Hollow casting is used to produce articles such as teapots.
The properties of a casting slip depends on multiple factors, including:
The properties of each raw material in the slip.
The solids content of the slip.
The clay:non-plastic ratio in the slip.
The chemicals in the slip, either deliberately added or introduced from the raw materials and water.
The type and amount of deflocculant.
The ambient conditions, especially temperature and humidity.
The amount of energy involved in mixing the raw materials to prepare the slip.
Additionally, factors affecting the rate of formation of the cast piece include:
The viscosity and thixotropy of the slip, which are invariably modified immediately before casting.
Properties of the mould material, such as permeability.
Moisture content of the mould.
The casting slip is poured into a porous mould. Due to capillary pressure from the mould, a semi-solid particulate layer is formed on the mould through deposition of the solids in the slip.
Official source
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Related courses (1)
MSE-326: Ceramic and colloidal processing
The course covers the production of ceramics and colloids from the basic scientific concepts and theories needed to understand the forming processes to the mechanisms and methods of sintering (firing)
Related concepts (3)
Kiln
A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects made from clay into pottery, tiles and bricks. Various industries use rotary kilns for pyroprocessing (to calcinate ores, such as limestone to lime for cement) and to transform many other materials. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, kiln was derived from the words cyline, cylene, cyln(e) in Old English, in turn derived from Latin culina ("kitchen").
Pottery
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a potter is also called a pottery (plural potteries). The definition of pottery, used by the ASTM International, is "all fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed, except technical, structural, and refractory products".
Ceramic
A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain, and brick. The earliest ceramics made by humans were pottery objects (pots, vessels, or vases) or figurines made from clay, either by itself or mixed with other materials like silica, hardened and sintered in fire.