Crafting the Curve: Automating Plaster Mold Design for Ceramic Slip Casting with Shape Cast

Shape Cast is our novel software tool designed to simplify the creation of plaster molds for ceramic slip casting by automating the 3D modeling process. Instead of needing to model molds, Shape Cast allows artists to input a single 2D profile of the desired pot. Shape Cast uses that to generate ready-to-print 3D molds for plaster, accommodating factors such as clay shrinkage and mold structural requirements. We detail the mold generation process and associated software implementation. We provide case studies demonstrating the capabilities of Shape Cast. We opened a beta version of Shape Cast to the public and 501 users have signed up creating a total of 626 fully finalized 3D models. We detail feedback from questionnaire responses of 17 users.