Materials - 3D Printing: The Basics and Beyond - page 54

Concrete : King size concrete 3D printers are able to build a house in a day. As many ap-
plications in 3d printing, this concept is under development, very interesting and promising
(see more about houses under Applications: Architecture). Loughborough University in the
UK has done much research on 3D printing with concrete. California based Emerging Ob-
jects (see more under “Salt”) has developed a concrete material which is used in a binder
jetting process.
Marble : Italian company Marble Eco Design's project aims at reusing waste marble dust
from quarries to make a 3D printable marble based material.
Ice : Researchers at Montreal McGill University have been working since 2006 on develop-
ment of an ice printer. The resulting machine is called Cobra 600 which in its current form
only is suited for building smaller objects, but in the future the participants hope to build
larger structures for tourist architecture etc.
Salt : Emerging Objects is an American company started by two architecture professors,
Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello. Rael is active at the University of California, Berke-
ley and much of their projects are tied to Berkeley. In their design work they have deve-
loped a number of materials for additive manufacturing. One of the materials is salt, which
the couple used in a project to form an igloo/pavilion called “Saltygloo”, which was made
of panels of salt.
Straw-based filament : Chinese company Jiangsu Jinhe Hi-tech has patented a filament
that is a mix of waste straw coming from wheat, rice or cotton, PP and plastic additives.
The original material is in form of pellets but may be extruded in coils of filament which
can be used with an FDM printer. This material is claimed to be a greener alternative to
regular polymers.