Triaxial blends are used when you may want to explore

• changes involving two materials in a recipe e.g. if in the Cone 10 Glaze recipe we wanted to explore the effects resulting from changes to both EPK Kaolin and Silica.
• the variations in colour from the addition of two colourants
• the results of simply blending three different recipes

We will use the first case above as an example. The blend we will design could achieve the same result as the example used in Making a Line Blend

Designing the Corner Recipes for the Triaxial Blend

We will need to have three recipes for the corners of the triaxial blend.. Corner A - will be the original Cone 10 Glaze recipe Corner B - will be the Cone 10 Glaze recipe with a reduction in the quantity of EPK Kaolin Corner C - will be the Cone 10 Glaze recipe with a reduction in the quantity of Silica.

The following recipes were prepared in the Recipe to Formula environment. After making the reductions indicated above the recipes were converted to total 100. Note that the recipe names include the letter which indicates in which corner the recipe will be place.

All three recipes were saved to the following location: C:/Prgram Files/Matrix/Blends/Cone 6 Triaxial/.

The Cone 6 Triaxial folder was created in the Blends folder to hold all of the triaxial files.

Creating the Triaxial Blend

Move to the Blends environment and start the blend-making process by entering the name Cone 10 Glaze Triaxial in the Blend Name text box.

Follow the to the Select the Blend Type and choose the blend type and the number of samples for the triaxial as was done in Making a Line Blend.

Fig.1 Enter the blend name and select the blend type

After making the choices of blend type and sample number (Fig.1) we click on the red corner glaze buttons to point Matrix to the recipes to use in creating the blend. Matrix is now ready to make the blend so click the Make Blend button. Information regarding the blend can now be viewed before saving the worksheet and the recipes. e.g. you might want to check the range of samples on a graph incase it needs to be increased or reduced. Fi.g 2 shows the range of Al2O3 and SiO2 molecular parts represented in each of the recipes in the blend.

Fig.2 The triaxial blend mapped on the Al:Si graph

The A, B and C recipes are located on the graph (Fig.2) and the samples generated by Matrix for the triaxial are distributed betweeen these corners. The blend worksheet and recipes may now be saved using the buttons in the Save the Blend panel. More ... You will also want to print out the worksheet data so that you can mix the blend mand you may want to obtain a printout of the blend's recipes and formulae using buttons in the Print Blend Data panel.

Physically Making the Blend

To physically making the blend you will need to print the worksheet data.

Click the Worksheet Data button in the Print Blend Data panel to get the printout you need. You can take this printout to your glaze mixing lab and prepare the blend recipes and test tiles for firing.

Assessing the Blend After Firing

After you have fired the blend you will want to refer to the individual recipes representing the glazes on the test tiles.

Click the Blend Recipes button in the Print Blend Data panel to get the printout which includes all recipes and their unity formulae.

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