Using Lidar to calculate volume of an object

[David Duncan Livingston]

I am part of a community studio, and we need to calculate the size of our pots/plates/objects to fire. Lidar imaging found in current iPhones has the technology to do this. Does anyone know of an app to do the calculations?

The idea:  take a photo of your object against a simple background, and boom, your cubic inches are shown to you on your phone. The next step would be to have a running total for the firing volume that could be tied to an account at your local studio, and all the cumbersome calculations happen in the app.

Are any app developers out there??

David Livingston, Mill Valley, Ca

[fergusonjeff]

Just a little additional clarification, LiDAR works by continuous scanning from all angels and would require more than a single shot.  The background would not really matter because it is not using the visual image but laser detected distances in a large point cloud.  You would then have a large data file to export to some processing program. 

Might be a lot easier to just have a series of boxes and the smallest one it fits in is a specific price. 

[Bill Kielb]

21 hours ago, David Duncan Livingston said:

I am part of a community studio, and we need to calculate the size of our pots/plates/objects to fire.

Just a thought
It might be easier by weight which correlates to the energy needed to fire better and maybe add a few easy baselines on size for the perceived worth of the real estate inside. Firing a bunch of small plates / plaques that are heavy but not tall takes more shelves, hence more weight hence significant energy. Often the mass of the shelves ends up to be the same or more than the pots.

Some of the schemes I have seen is if it fits in box a,b,c then multiply the weight by ……….. similar to getting on an airplane. The weight often correlates to the size a bit as well. Encouraging throwing lighter, generally a good thing, encouraging throwing smaller often not as much of an issue.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Bill Kielb

[Min]

 From the Nov 2018 CM magazine Carrie Wiederhold has an article on making a grid firing fee box that looks pretty efficient. It's behind a paywall but you can access 3 articles a month for free. Image below taken from the article to give an idea of it. Article explains how the grid is made, works and the pricing equation. 

[neilestrick]

I'm with Bill. Making people calculate volume is a big pain for everyone involved. Asking most people to do that sort of math is not a good idea. Weight is a much easier way to do it, and you can easily have different pricing categories for big wide pieces like serving bowls that take up a lot of volume without much mass, and cups and such that are more compact. Or better yet, just include glazing and firing costs in the price of the clay. It keeps students from feeling like they're getting nickel-and-dimed to death, takes away a cumbersome step in the process, and makes it easier for people to  track and budget their pottery class spending.  I've done it by weight from day one, and it works fine. It's easy enough to figure out the approximate weight of clay in a typical load and calculate all the associated costs of firing and come up with a price. Plus it motivates people to throw thinner with less trimming, and makes them think more about the technical aspects of clay work like avoiding cracks and warping and whatnot that may keep the piece from getting fired.

[Chilly]

We charge by weight at the centre.  Plus a little extra for some glazes, or a little less if only once fired.  

[Callie Beller Diesel]

The studio I used to go to had a couple of methods, because they had classes, rental hours for more intermediate/advanced folks, and at the time you could rent a kiln* to fire your own work in. In most instances, you had to buy your clay from them and their price included the firing/glazing. If you took a class, a certain amount of clay was included. 

For those who came in to rent kilns, they charged by kiln volume used. They figured out a charge for a full kiln that included fuel, some tech supervision/loading time and wear and tear allowance. They’d pro-rate the fee based on how much of the kiln was filled, rounded up to the next quarter kiln.  Eg, i If you filled 2/3 of the kiln that would cost $80 to fire full you’d be charged $60 for 3/4 of the kiln. The price was the same regardless of end temperature.

It made it easy to do calculations on the fly.

 

*you had to first prove a certain amount of technical ability, either by taking classes with them first, or you had to have a ceramics degree or equivalent if you hadn’t. You also had to provide exact clay type and all glaze recipes to the tech. After that, they had figured out the cost of firing each of their kilns, including some markup for wear and tear. After I got my own kiln and could compare notes, they were charging 4x the cost of fuel for an electric kiln. Any accidental glaze runs had to be scraped off by the person who made them, and if a shelf was ruined the renter payed for the replacement. 

[Pres]

As a Moderator, I am letting the Forum community know that there is an App out there for doing much of the organizational work for arranging classes, firing the kiln and measuring what is fired. Just do a google search and it may be yours at a price. Listing such is against the Terms of Use for the forum. Thank  you for your patience.

 

best,

Pres

[Pres]

Years ago when I started up an adult class at the HS, I went through trying to figure the cost of a student's pieces. I started by weighing one of my pieces that was a demo glaze fired. Figured in the shrinkage of the clay, then the amount of wet clay that would be. Priced that then added a price for glazes and a price for firing. Broke this down to a price per pound. Price went up over the years, only the tuition price remained the same. 6 Saturdays, 9-12, $60. In the last year I ran two classes on Saturday as everyone knew I was retiring. We bought a lot of equipment with that tuition money over the years. 4 wheels, Griffin Grip, Bailey wall extruder, narrow standing work benches for glazing, potters stools for the wheels, and much more. Helped al lot with my budget restraints.

 

best,

Pres