This was sent to me via private email from someone who read what I had
> done with rubber, silicone and plastic molds and ceramics (slip
> casting). Apparently what I have done HAS in fact been done elsewhere > and even more.
>
> Here is a link.
>
> It seems that a Professor in Tokyo has managed to pour slip castings in
> a production environment thus avoiding the longer drying times I wrote
> about via implementing a "nonaqueous carrier" that allows faster drying
> in a non-porous mold. he is doing this in a rubber mold.
>
>
formatting link
Slip casting?
> Professor Nakagawa of the University of Tokyo mentioned to JTEC/WTEC
> panelists that ceramic parts are typically fabricated in plaster molds,
> usually using slip casting. He recently developed a nonaqueous carrier
> for the ceramic, which does not require a porous mold. Nakagawa
> successfully cast ceramic into a rubber mold, which opens the
> possibility of having reusable molds that can be created rapidly using > an RP master.
>
> United States
>
> In the United States, universities, industries, and government
> laboratories have been actively working with ceramic materials. Several
> licensees are commercializing aspects of MIT's "Three-Dimensional
> Printing" program These include Soligen, which offers the "Direct Shell
> Production Casting" machine. The machine "writes" patterns for molds
> directly into ceramic powder using a binder dispersed via an ink-jet
> printer head. The resulting pattern is then cleaned of loose powder and
> sintered to provide a shell into which metal can be cast. A host of
> other processes are under development, most of which are tied to
> modifications of existing commercial systems. Some of these efforts are
> mentioned below.
>
> Selective laser sintering of ceramic powders and fusing of coated
> ceramics are being investigated by DTM and the University of Texas. Both
> Lone Peak Engineering and the University of Dayton are investigating
> production of ceramic tapes and use of these tapes in the laminated
> object manufacturing (LOM) environment. In addition, the University of
> Dayton is extending this process to ceramic composites using both
> chopped and continuous fiber reinforcement in its tape systems. Ceramic
> loading of photopolymers for use in stereolithography systems is being
> developed at the University of Michigan. Argonne National Laboratories
> and Rutgers University are developing ceramic-loaded filaments that
> will be compatible with fused deposition molding systems, similar to the
> multiphase jet solidification (MJS) system being developed in Europe.
> Case Western Reserve University is developing the CAM-LEM system, which
> utilizes ceramic material delivered in sheet format. Each material layer
> is cut by a 5-axis laser cutter that shapes the edge to match the slope
> of the part at every location. The layers are then robotically stacked
> and sintered to form the part. Other efforts include the program at
> Stanford Research Institute to develop a filled photopolymer.
>
> The U.S. effort encompasses the development of ceramic molds for casting
> and the fabrication of both monolithic and composite ceramic parts. The
> particular ceramics under study include lower-temperature oxides and the
> higher-temperature materials such as SiC and AlN. RP fabrication of
> ceramic components could potentially open a variety of application areas
> that heretofore have been cost-prohibitive.
>
> It is NOT impossible.
> Michael
Still trying to make tooling & stuff to slip cast 180 3/4" squares roughly 1/8-3/16 thick using Silicone Rubber or Latex molds like your wife (per you) does in her hobby?