I have a friend who makes ceramics (also teaching in that field). She had asked if I could make her some custom “Makers Marks” with which she could stamp her work before it is fired. This is so that it is marked as produced by her in the same way that a hallmark is used in jewelry.
The original designs were in Photoshop format, which isn’t much good if you need a vector drawing, so I converted them to that (by tracing) with Affinity Designer from Serif. That application is basically the same as Adobe Illustrator except it’s about £40 for a permanent license. I’d highly recommend it if you don’t agree with the Adobe subscription licensing model. 🙂
I could then import those scalable vector drawings into Fusion360 to allow me to create extrusions of them and then export those as STL files suitable for printing.
To ensure they make the appropriate marks the correct way around, the designs were reversed when creating the embossing/extrusions.
The first versions were about 15mm across, which meant that some of the finer details were lost. This is one of the limitations of FDM printing – you obviously can’t make details smaller than the size of the extruder nozzle!
Although, I was told that they did look fine when used for their intended purpose.
The second set was twice the size, being 30mm across. These looked a lot better and the client was very happy with them once they’d arrived in the post.
All of the objects were printed with a 50mm ‘handle’ so that they’re easier to hold when your hands may be covered in slippery wet clay.
If you have a project that may need something 3D printed, feel free to contact us to find out how we can help.
For more information on the ceramics work of Fay De Winter, she can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as State Of Clay