3d printed wheel shield clip

published on pottery, making pottery, 3Dprint

photo of a Brent pottery wheel, with clips on the splash pan, holding a strip of plastic as a sheild

I was having a serious problem with my new plaster bats. They're tall enough to raise the throwing surface above the edge of the splash pan on my standing wheel. This was resulting in a fair amount of slip spatter on the walls:

pegboard wall of the studio, polka-dotted with splashes of white clay slip

It's a clay studio, so a little spatter was fine, but this would just keep building up and eventually become a silica hazard. I needed a way to make the edge of my splash pan just a inch and a half taller, without hampering my arms while throwing. Including throwing wide plates.

With some trial-and-error, I designed a clip that would slide onto the rolled edge of the Brent wheel splash pan. I printed five of them.

design for 3d printed splash guard clip, which also looks like the stylized design of a thunderbird's head

Then I went to the hardware store and grabbed a plastic splash guard, the kind you normally attach to the bottoms of doors. That slid neatly in to give me the 1.5 inches of extra splash guard I needed ... without getting in the way of my arms.

another picture of the wheel with shield, and the keying system for my bats

These clips should be useful for anyone who owns a Brent wheel. If you want to use them for trimming, you could put in a much taller piece of plastic. If you improve the design, please share!