WISRD Research & Engineering Journal

2.4 Kiln Once the ceramic platforms were printed, they dried on a ceramic tile that was directly placed into a kiln. Prints were carefully transported fromWISRD to MORI. The kiln used was a Cress Electric Furnace Model ES27, 208 Volts, 55 Amps as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. The electric kiln used to fire ceramic platforms for our research. 3. Designs and Prints 3.1 Criteria We considered the following criteria during our platform design process.

(1) The coral fragments generated in our research are first epoxied to small, ceramic, off-the- shelf plugs for ease of handling as described in a technical report by Luca G. Rather than eliminate the plugs and epoxy fragments directly onto the platform, we chose to keep the fragments on plugs to allow us to move the plugs around the platform and remove plugs as needed during testing. Therefore, our platform design needed openings for the plugs. Our design also had to fit more than just a few corals/plugs to enable the measurement of large data sets to get more reliable growth rates and possibly eliminate outliers. (2) The platform needed to be raised 2 to 3 inches off the bottom of the tank for the plugs to fit and to allow for water flow under the platform, which required legs to be added. (3) The platform had to be solid and steady. In other words, it had to stay at the bottom of the tank and not be buoyant. For coral growth rates to be determined by image analysis, the platforms must remain stationary. (4) The printed substrate must not corrode in seawater. Since we would eventually put them in the ocean, we wanted them to be constructed out of an environmentally friendly material; this was the originally reason we opted for ceramics in the first place, over plastics or metal.

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