Master’s Thesis Defence

Bhaskar Dutt

Metal-Infused FDM Clay 3D Printing: Fabricating Electrically Functional Ceramics with Embedded Copper Structures

August 13th, 2025

Background

Examples of traditional earthenware that highlight the long-standing history and cultural significance of clay include a) handcrafting an earthen pot, b) a 15th-century Japanese earthen pot, and c) a modern earthen pot used for storing cool water¹.

Examples of combining ceramics and metals in art: a) process of making a ceramic-metal art piece, b) supporting the piece in the kiln during firing, and c) Deborah Sigel’s “Wisp”, created using Egyptian paste and steel.

1. Image credit: Traditional pottery image from Wikipedia (wikimedia.org), Cleveland Museum of Art (clevelandart.org), and Mittify (mittify.in).
2. Image credit: Ceramic Arts Network (ceramicartsnetwork.org) and Deborah Sigel (deborahsigel.com).

Background

Turning thermoplastic pellets into a 3D printed object.

Clay 3D printing

1. Bell, F., Mcclure, E., Friedman-Gerlicz, C., Ta, R., and Buechley, L. Shape-Changing Clay-Dough: Taking a Material-Oriented Approach to 3D Printing Ceramic Forms. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York, NY, USA, May 2024), CHI ’24, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1–19.
2. Friedman-Gerlicz, C., Gelosi, D., Bell, F., and Buechley, L. WeaveSlicer: Expanding the Range of Printable Geometries in Clay. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York, NY, USA, May 2024), CHI ’24, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1–16.`

a) Clay 3D printing process from Shape-changing Clay-dough [1], and b) the Workflow proposed by WeaveSlicer [2].

BUT!

1. Metals and clays exhibit very different rheology, drying, and shrinkage behaviours, making them challenging to integrate in controlled ways.

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• Most clay printers are single-material devices, lacking multi-nozzle capabilities found in thermoplastic FDM printers.

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Metal-Infused Clay 3D Printing

FDM 3D Printing

Porcelain Clay

Copper Metal

Method 1: Injection

Method 2: Stacking

Fabrication

1. Apparatus used.
2. Choice of clay, porcelain and metal.
3. Copper sintering and oxidation prevention.

Apparatus

Machines used in the fabrication process: a) Eazao clay 3D printer¹, b) NaberTherm kiln², c) dough mixer for clay preparation³, and d) fruit hardness meter⁴.

1. https://www.eazao.com/product/matrix-m500/
2. https://nabertherm.com/en/products/arts-crafts/top-loaders/top-loaders
3. https://www.electrolux.dk/kitchen/small-kitchen-appliances/kitchen-machines/kitchen-machine/e6km1-4ppt/
4. https://www.amazon.com/Fruit-penetrometer-Sclerometer-Hardness-Tester/dp/B018U92DIY

Base Clay: Pocelain

1. Smooth, translucent finish, and smaller particle size <2 μm.
2. Non–porous and water resistant.
3. Distinct. White colour, easy to distinguish from copper clay.
4. Sinters around 1280 degrees C, which can be achieved by our kiln.

Metal Clay: Copper

1. High electrical conductivity.
2. Relatively low sintering temperature and ease, around 980 °C.
3. Ease in recycling.
4. Distinct colour from porcelain clay.

Sintering and Oxidation Prevention

Type of Charcoal Used

a) Showing unlit charcoal, b) showing after firing, which consumes oxygen in the process.

Design Space

Experiments

1. Clay Shrinkage.
2. Copper Clay Composition and Sintering Temperatures.
3. Resistivity Analysis of Sintered Copper.

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Porcelain & Copper Shrinkage

Porcelain clay-based object shrinks after firing at 980 °C for 3 hours; Φ indicates diameter.

Copper clay-based object shrinkage after being fired for 3 hours at 980 °C, Φ represents the diameter

Copper Clay Composition & Sintering Temperatures

Copper Clay Sintering Conditions and Observations

Copper Clay Formulation Using Methylcellulose

Copper Resistivity Analysis

Measured Resistance and Calculated Resistivity of Sintered Copper. These values are around 8–13 times higher than the resistivity of pure copper (1.68 × 10−8 Ω · m)

Ceramic Hating Pad

a) CAD model of the heating pad, b) Copper traces after sintering, c) Fired ceramic heat pad top.

Ceramic Touch Pad

a) CAD model of the touchpad, b) green-body touchpad, c) fired ceramic touchpad with copper traces.

Ceramic PCB

a) CAD model of the ceramic PCB, b) copper trace layout, c) Ceramic PCB powering four LEDs.

Ceramic Bunny Cup

a) 3D model of the Stanford Bunny, b) copper element design in the base, c) fired bunny cup with copper heating element.

What did not work!

Aluminium Sintering

It requires careful atmospheric control!

Example of failed aluminium clay sintering. The arrows highlight the porous structure and incomplete bonding of the aluminium.

Limitations

Uneven trace widths are caused by the different shrinkage behaviour of porcelain and copper clay.

Future Work

Using the Programmable filaments [1] method to embed two types of clay into a single chamber programmatically.

1. Haruki Takahashi, Parinya Punpongsanon, and Jeeeun Kim. 2020. Programmable Filament: Printed Filaments for Multi-material 3D Printing. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1209–1221. https://doi.org/10.1145/3379337.3415863

Conclusion

1. Ceramics & Metals can be fabricated together using the FDM method.
2. We can incorporate sensing, heating & conductive features into the ceramic objects.

Thank You!

Key Results from Material Characterisation