Polymer Clay Gears
I’ve seen people making polymer clay gears but never actually using them functionally. Mainly they are for steam punk projects and are decorative. But I couldn’t see why polymer clay gears wouldn’t work as real gears to make things move, so I gave it a go!
I’ve mentioned that I took an online course with Puppets in Prague and I really enjoyed it and so I took their advanced course this year. As part of that we had to come up with a project using gears. I remembered Rob Ives has a cool mouse machine project so I made his model in cardboard and then set about making a polymer clay version. I used the same mechanism but I changed a bit of construction due to using different materials and also changed the character to be a robot. He has hinges at his hip and shoulder so he can freely move – to get on with his busy work! The robot is driven by a crank and a pair of gears made from Kato Polyclay. You can see him in action below.
The piece of wood was a scrap piece I was using for testing but after a while I decided I liked the juxtaposition and kept it. There was quite a lot of adjustments to be made and I learnt a lot during the process.
I decided to play about with gears in some small projects – here is the first one – a mechanical brooch. It’s backed with magnets so I can store it on the fridge or in picture frame as kinetic wall art too. I love the verstaility polymer clay gives me for colour and decoration.
I use Kato polyclay which is much more rigid than a lot of the other brands available I haven’t tried gears with other brands yet. I imagine they will be fine for small gears – I will give it a try sometime and report back!
