Waste sawdust into 3D printed guitar and wooden lamps

3D Printed guitar, surprised to know about that, I too, the appeal of working with natural materials is well-known among woodworkers. But what if there was a more environmentally friendly way to obtain this fantastic stuff?

Herein lies the role of 3D printing. Using several layers of material, 3D printing is a technology that can produce items. This implies that you can produce beautiful 3D printed musical instruments, wooden lamps and guitars among other things from waste materials like sawdust. Read our below blog post about 3D printing solutions for woodworkers to discover more about this fascinating technology. Everything from the fundamentals to more complex approaches will be covered.

With the aid of technology known as 3D printing, objects made of digital data can be produced. The printer builds an object from the ground up by deposition of successive layers of material. The final product may be precisely controlled through this technique, making it adaptable for a wide range of applications.

Making replacement components for equipment, personalizing products for specific clients, and quickly and efficiently making prototypes are some common applications of 3D printing. Before being printed, objects can also be developed using 3D software, providing designers with more creativity.

Waste sawdust is transformed into gorgeous 3D printed musical instrument , wooden lights and guitars using a 3D printing technique. There are numerous varieties of 3D printers available, and each has benefits and drawbacks. A Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) printer is the most common kind. These printers deposit layers of material onto a moving print bed using a flexible plastic filament. The filament is heated to the point of melting, at which point it extrudes through nozzles on the printer head. FDM printers rely on temperature gradients to cause the ink to harden, which results in lower-quality prints despite being very inexpensive and simple to set up.

Extrusion Modeling (EM) printers are yet another popular form of printer. These printers deposit layers of material by melting heated plastic under gas pressure. When the molten plastic touches air or another liquid, it forms a layer and pours out of tiny nozzles close to the print head. EM printers are more expensive than FDM printers but are able to print more detailed items with more layers, which results in higher-quality prints.

Rapid prototyping (RP) and selective laser sintering (SLS), two 3D printing techniques, are currently under development and have not yet hit the market. These printers construct objects layer by layer from a computer model using unique materials and methods. A liquid thermoplastic is heated in RP printers until it solidifies, creating the structure of the product. In SLS printers, tiny droplets of molten plastic are heated by lasers and fused into the required shape.

3D Printing waste is boon or bane?

3D printing with sawdust has numerous benefits, but it also has certain drawbacks. The majority of 3D printers need particular filaments, and post-processing is frequently needed to get rid of extra material or fix faults. Additionally, not every object can be used with the technique, and certain prints are delicate and challenging to handle.

How 3D printing helps to convert waste into home decor?

The “Cocoon” lamps, which cost $2,160 each, are in high demand from Hagen Hinderdael, a London-based company that works at the interface of sustainable design, architecture, and cutting-edge technology. Co-founder of the company Sofia Hagen claims that they have been flying off the shelves of international design stores like Hoettges Windows in Vienna and Minotti in London, as well as the business’s own pop-up shop in Piccadilly Arcade, as rapidly as they have appeared on them.

The lamp might easily be a showcase item from the mid-century modern era, painstakingly carved out of a costly hardwood block, perhaps mahogany or teak, with a marble-like finish and expertly hand-finished to shine.

It’s not, though. In addition to not being built of premium wood, the lamp’s raw material, sawdust, is on the other end of the lumber quality spectrum from premium wood and is still one of the largest environmental ills in existence. Forust printed the lamp using sawdust and a binder-jet printer after receiving a rendering of it from HagenHinderdael, which was acquired by 3D printing king Desktop Metal in 2019.

3D printing with sawdust

As you may know, 3D printing is a process that can be used to create items with astonishing designs, toughness, and physical integrity using any type of powdered material, including metal, porcelain, and sand. Supply chains have also been impacted by the technology in a short period of time, in addition to industrial manufacturing.

However, up until this point, 3D printing with wood had not been very effective. As fellow members of the San Francisco-based 3D collective Emerging Objects, Andrew Jeffery, formerly president of Boston Ceramics, Virginia San Fratello at the Department of Design at San Jose State University, and Ronald Rael, with the Department of Architecture at the University of California Berkeley, came together and began tinkering with materials. This is how Forust was created. Through experiments with unlikely materials like salt and used tyres, the collective has created remarkable works of utilitarian art.

It was only a matter of time until the group concentrated on figuring out how to print wooden items, a 3D printing problem that has remained unsolved to this day. Their main motivation was to incorporate that strategy into a long-term solution. Therefore, Forust’s commercial 3D printing solution seeks to reduce, if not entirely, the 84 million tonnes of sawdust produced by the furniture industry that are either burned or dumped in landfills.

How does it work?

You can always get in touch with Forust to look into cooperation if you’re an individual or small business with a product idea and want to provide the company with a CAD-like rendering of your design for a predetermined print run. The printing solution, however, can be purchased outright if you are a larger manufacturer.

The Shop System Forust Edition is the name of this remedy, and it is currently available for purchase for the asking price of $300,000. With a build box measuring 13.8 x 8.7 x 7.9 inches and a print speed of up to 1,600 cc/hr, it consists of a binder jet 3D printer. Forust additionally offers unfinished maple or oak waste sawdust from the furniture and wood milling sectors, where the larger chunks have previously been sieved from the required finer powder. An inkjet print head deposits a water-based binder onto the sawdust’s surface in the build box, where the two materials combine.

A water-based ink that can imitate almost any type of wood grain, including mahogany, rosewood, zebrano, and ebony, is concurrently injected by the printhead. Layer by layer, according to the 3D software’s prescribed rendering contours, the binder is deposited and the ink is injected.

Until it reaches the finished level, the print head can build up to a height of 4 to 5 of an inch per hour (referred to as “Z height” in 3D printing jargon) (and shape). The leftover sawdust in the box is then gathered for the following project, and a non-toxic, bio-epoxy resin is infused throughout the entire sculpture to strengthen it. These 3D-printed wood components perform similarly to conventional wood ones: they can be sanded, stained, polished, dyed, coated, refinished, and they can take screws and nails.

What this could mean for you?

The success of Desktop Metal depends on how simple it will be for several businesses to switch from polymers and plastics to environmentally friendly wood components.

According to Arjun Aggarwal, head of corporate development at the firm, “customers now want to print parts in-house and exploit their own waste streams.” Aggarwal envisions numerous industry groups that are ready for Forust’s solution. To name a few, these include furniture, lighting, toys, kitchenware, car interiors (particularly those of luxury companies), and architectural and design paneling. Nobody would be able to tell the difference if someone printed off a part to replace a broken leg or panel on an antique.

The one-of-a-kind, custom 3D-printed guitars that Olaf Diegel, head of the Creative Design and Additive Manufacturing Lab at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, enjoys making, serve as an illustration of the possibilities that lie ahead for individual makers. When Diegel learned about Forust’s sawdust-consuming printer, he decided to give it a try by emailing the US-based business a CAD design of a guitar. Previously, Diegel had mostly utilized metal powders and selective laser sintering (SLS) to create his guitars.

According to Diegel, a similar, custom design would have cost $1,000 to $2,000 while the 3D-printed version cost $540. With the advancement of technology, that price will only decrease.

Measuring sustainability

Despite how lovely and useful these printed products are, Desktop Metal’s new business strategy — and, some would argue, future success — is mostly driven by its desire to be a sustainable choice. ZDNET has requested more information regarding the technology’s overall carbon footprint

Because of the distributed (or localized) form of production that Desktop Metal is promoting with their Shop System, many people are hailing 3D printing as naturally more democratizing, less wasteful, and more efficient across the value chain of a product. A lot better than having unsold merchandise sit in the store is on-demand printing of goods.

Binder jet printing is far more environmentally friendly because it uses much less heat than the more popular 3D laser sintering of metal. Additionally, compared to subtractive techniques, additive processes don’t waste as much material. Design expertise combined with 3D modeling expertise and material science knowledge may become the next evolutionary step for a competent leatherworker or jeweler when technology becomes more accessible and portable.

The most significant possibility is that Forust could have an impact on the emerging culture of sustainable production. When creating something new today, Sofia Hagen of HagenHinderdael tells ZDNet, “We can do attractive shapes, but if you develop something new, it should at least not cause any more damage than you are already causing the world.” Repurposing what is already there is the only justification for generating and producing new items.