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Taking a Look at Hollow Slip Casting

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Introduction Slip casting is a technique used to mass-produce ceramic shapes that are not easily made on a wheel. To perform slip casting, a plaster mold is filled with a liquid clay casting slip. The water inside the casting slip is drawn to the plaster mold until a layer of solid clay is left deposited onto the mold walls. Once the right thickness is achieved, the excess casting slip is poured off and a hollow cast remains. Slip casting has been a large impression on society through its commercial applications. Because of its low cost and ease of mass-production, many everyday items have been casted using slip such as: figurines, doll faces, dishes, flowerpots, lamp bases, toilets[1]. The recycling ability of slip is another asset, since the loss ratio is an inevitable part to the slip casting procedure. Slip casting has many advantages. The slip casting process allows for the creation of high detailed duplicates. Slip casting opens the door to experiment with recipes that lack plasticity such as bone china, talc, or spodumene bodies[1]. The slip casting process is also a favored technique because it can produce very consistent results, results like equal density during formation. Traditional slips are mixtures of clays, non-plastic minerals, deflocculates, water, and occasionally flocculants. A deflocculant is an electrolyte enables fluidity with a minimal amount of water. Less water results in far less shrinkage and greater strength. On the other hand, a

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