Oct. 14, 2014
At this year's Rome Maker Faire, WASP, one of the largest manufacturer of FDM 3D printers in Italy, showcased their 4 metre tall Delta 3D printer which is capable of building large objects in clay.
Massimo Moretti, founder of WASP project, had a dream: building houses using a 3D printer and saving the world. Wasp (World's Advanced Saving Project) Project was born in 2012 focusing on research of 3D printing house and its materials. The team has been working with ceramics, clays and fluid-dense materials ever since and developed the first commercial extruders for clays.
3D printed ceramics can be used in many areas. By using implantable ceramics such as bioactive hydroxylapatite ceramic, bioglass ceramic and aluminum oxide ceramic, it is also possible to create 3D printed ceramic bone that copies all the structural and functional aspects of human bones. As we reports earlier, Australian scientists from the University of Sydney have been working on a 3D printed substitute for bones made of ceramic material. The 3D printed bone will be strong enough to withstand the pressure of use, and porous enough to allow blood and cells to pass through it. In addition, it will even be capable of encouraging the regeneration of new bone cells and eventually be replaced by natural bone in the body.
WASP says they have also started some projects in this direction and they keep on investing on clay 3D printing as a tool for scientific research and production in several fields.
Today the company has announced that they have developed a new extruder with a 0.35mm diameter nozzle that is capable of of printing clay-based filament. Clay-based filament, such as Lay-Ceramic, was invented by Kai Parthy, developer of Laywoo-D3 wood-based filament, and Bendlay, Laybrick, Poro-Lay material for 3D printing. His Lay-Ceramic is a filled filament that allows you to create objects that can be fired to hard pottery. To work with Lay-Ceramic you need to have a full metal hotend, quick and effective warming and cooling fans and a filament heater, a flexible tube to heat the filament up to 35-40 degrees.
According to WASP group, their new extruder is capable of achieving precise control of the flow of molten clay same as the thermoplastic extruder.
WASP will introduce this new extruder and 3D printed ceramic bone at 3D Printing Show in Paris held on 17th and 18th of October.
"We want to move 3D printing world from representation of objects to realization of them, we'd like to improve people's life, create new jobs, support scientific research," says Massimo.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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