The 3D Workshop 1 is located on the ground floor of the Art & Design Building, Take the right hand corridor from the Gallery and it’s the first door on the right.

3D Crafts

The ceramic area provides support for hand built and thrown work with a variety of slips, glazes and clay materials. An extruder for extruding different clay forms and shapes is available, as well as a drying cupboard and spray booth for finishing the ceramic process.

The casting room area facilitates casting and mould making using silicone, plaster and latex for mouldings made from resins and rubbers. There is also a plaster lathe, band-saw and fettling benches for finishing work.

There are three ceramic front load kilns, three flatbed glass kilns and an upright test casting kiln.

Other equipment for glass includes a diamond saw for cutting, a watered cooled diamond drill and linishers for finishing. The sandblaster creates an abrasive finish on glass, ceramics and plastics.

The upgraded jewellery benches are used with enamel kilns, hand and machine tooling including drills and a fly press, for non-ferrous metals e.g. soldering, pressing and forming jewellery and fine work.

Shaping, Forming, Finishing

The Machine shop has centre lathes, pillar drills and milling machines for machining plastics, metals and timber. There are band-saws and circular saws for cutting bulk materials as well as disc, belt and bobbin sanders for fine finishing. There are also vacuum machines for plastic forming.

The casting room area facilitates casting and mould making using silicone, plaster and latex for mouldings made from resins and rubbers. There is also a plaster lathe, band-saw and fettling benches for finishing work.

Rapid Prototyping

The Rapid prototyping area has a range of equipment linked to computers for digitally controlled output. The school has recently purchased an EOS Formiga P110 Selective Laser Sintering system which makes direct use of digital CAD data to produce polymer parts of the highest surface quality. This is a high level of entry system for additive manufacturing, capable of cost-efficient small series production, customized products with complex geometries and rapid prototyping applications. It is supported by an Objet 30 and a Ultimaker2 3D printer, both of which build models in plastic.

Evolution 60 watt Speedy and Piranha 120 watt laser cutters cut paper, card and plastics up to 6 mm thick and can engrave on a range of materials from paper to stone.

A Tryax 4 axis machine runs Mastercam post processing software and is ideal for machining small products and components.

This is complimented by an MK vacuum casting chamber that allows us to produce silicone moulds which are bubble free and very accurate. From these moulds we can batch produce components with a variety of properties using flexible or rigid resins.

Evolution 30 watt and 60 watt Speedy laser cutters cut paper, card and plastics up to 6 mm thick and can engrave on a range of materials from paper to stone.

This space includes the rooms AA110a, AA110b, AA120, AA123, AA135 and AA138.