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MICROWAVE TEST ON POLYMER CLAY I have been using polymer clays for over twenty years in my creative works and teaching kids for play clay classes. After completion of your creative project, the standard is to bake in an oven, the best is to bake in a convection oven. Temperature setting varies from 130ºC to 150ºC baking it between 15 to 30 minutes depending on the size or thickness of the finish work. The manufacturer will advice you, DO NOT MICROWAVE the clay. Well, there is a method of microwaving your clay work, I had tested it, you can try following my method cooking the clay beads and other clay creations in the microwave oven. Microwaving method will never over baked your project. To begin with cooking the polymer clay in the microwave oven you need a Tupperware container or any mivrowave safe container. The container is important for good result, do not use ceramic container. Ceramic bowl produce heat and any impurity in the container will have reaction while microwaving the clay work. Depending on the size and thickness, always fill the container with water above your clay work. For any size 15mm diameter you can set for about 10 minutes, do not fill the beads in a oversize container, you must proportion the container with your clay work. For bigger size clay work use a bigger container and set timing to 10min or more. Always check your oven if you are cooking for more than 15min and ensure that there are water in the container. Microwaving process will boil and evaporate the water in the container. You can also microwave the project many times if you feel that it is not well cook, just make sure there is WATER in the container. Otherwise, it will burned the polymer clay within 2 min. in the oven, it will create lots of fume.
Testing begin with six various types of polymer clay with a diameter of 15mm.
Filled the container with water in the sink.
Put the container with the test samples in the microwave for 5 minutes.
Pour away the hot water in the sink.
Cooked polymer clay.
Result The cooked samples are very hard if you pressed them onto the table top. I had also throw them against the wall and floor down at a level of 1.5 meters. There are no damages to all the polymer clay test samples. Splitting them reveal consistent of the clay structure inside out and there are no uncured clay right in the center by scratching it with a metal tool.
Conclusion The test conducted show the success of cooking the polymer clay in the microwave oven. But, there are limitation in cooking the polymer clay, you have to put your clay work in a proper microwave container, filled with water. Microwave container will limit cooking the size of your clay work, as compare to the convection oven, you can bake bigger project. Overall results is very encouraging, for those who do not own a convectional oven, microwave oven can be used in hardening the polymer clay. Update The good news for Microwaving the polymer clay, the Fimo Clay recomended baking temperature is 110º C (230º F), this temperature is even more suitable to microwave the Fimo Polymer Clay and fully cured the clay.
Microwaving plastic clay February 6, 2013 AM 10:07:23 GMT+08:00 I microwaved the clay and it worked great, but I have a question. Can toxins form in the microwave this way? I know we are not supposed to use our regular food oven for baking this kind of clay. So I wondered if that might be true of the microwave, too. Thanks for your help! Marian Camden, Psy.D.,
LLC 07-Feb-2013, at 8:21 AM, Sim Garie wrote: Thanks Marian, I will share
with you any of my experiments and tests. February 7, 2013 PM 06:40:32 GMT+08:00 Sorry Marian, I didn't answer
your question about "toxins in microwave", if you microwave
the clay in the water filled container, any impurity or toxin
will be contained in the water. February 8, 2013 AM 01:01:07 GMT+08:00 Hi Garie, Thanks very much for your answer. I didn't know the new clay is non-toxic, so that is good news. Congratulations on your dog who lived such a long life! I hope my dog lives that long, too! Marian Camden, Psy.D.,
LLC
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Typical container I had used to contain the polymer clay
