Hi Everyone!
I am really thrilled to share with you this project which I have been developing for the last two months and that we’ll showcase next week @ 3D print Hub, the first fair in Italy entirely dedicated to professional 3D printing. (3D Hubs Event link here)
3D Hubs was invited to participate and I decided to develop a collaborative project where local hubs could participate in order to create a large 3d printed structure.
As an Architect I always dreamed to 3D print my projects, not just in small scale models but in real 1:1 scale.
Obviously some of you might have heard of the 3D Print Canal House 1 by DUS Architect, or the marvelous Project Egg, although when looking at these examples I faced two main problems:
-
Technology
3D Print local house is using a proprietary printer (the famous kamer maker) that is veeery large and is almost 10x the size of my printers
2. Time
Project egg took more than a year to find enough printers for producing its 4000 components while I had only two months time for designing and producing the project
So I had to find a solution to address these two big issues, and also find a theme for the project the would showcase the potential of a distributed network of 3D printers.
I always had an interest in the work of Buckminster Fuller who back in the 50’s was able to develop these large architectural structures with very small and simple components.
So suddenly I realized that I could have used his same approach:
- 3D Print small components that would act as joints and combine them with another material, like wood or steel bars, in order to extend and maximize the dimension of the structure.
Secondly I also wanted this structure to express one of the key aspects of 3D printing:
- Producing thousands of singular components all different from each other.
With these two objective in mind I sat in front of Rhino and Grasshopper for some hundred hours and this was the result:
All the black components that you see in the 3d model are being printed right now by the best Hubs in the Milan community (you can scroll trough the notes to see the names of the hubs) and in just a week we will assemble all of them at the fair!
The feedback from the hubs has been great and they are all looking forward to see their components being part of this structure…
But that’s not all:
While developing the structure I found out that this system is very flexible and could be used for other purposes other than ephemeral structures…
Thanks to Filippo Mambretti, I got in contact with D3co 1 a young and very cool brand of furniture that saw the project and asked us to develop the same system for their stand for the Milan Design Week in April. So right after 3D print hub we will extend the project to reach as many local hubs as possible and have 130 printed components covering an area of 80 square meters!!
In the next days I will post some other material regarding the final assembly too…
In the meantime I would like to have your feedback on this project and to involve 3DHubs global community because I think this system could evolve and be developed a lot also by cooperating and hearing your advice on this platform…
Lastly I would also like to invite you to 3D Print hub next week and see this project built!
Ciao!
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Feb '15last reply
Mar '15- 7
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