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IPFS News Link • 3D Printing

Breakthrough for large scale printing of wood at ten times lower cost than other 3D printing

• nextbigfuture.com by brian wang

The bottom-up use of cellulose to fabricate 3D objects has had big problems that prevented printing wood for practical applications. Use in combination with plastics has lacked scalability and has had high production cost.

Researchers in Singapore have demonstrated the general use of cellulose to manufacture large 3D objects. They are using fungal-like adhesive material(s) (FLAM). The cost of FLAM is in the range of commodity plastics and 10 times lower than the cost of common filaments for 3D printing, such as polylactic acid.

SUDT (Singapore University of Technology and Design) has succeeded in using the cellulose material to make a chair and a series of cellulose spheres. The team made a 1.2 meter-long turbine blade entirely out of its new material.


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