Gallery: 3-D Printer Creates Entire Bu...

< back to story

PLAY SLIDESHOW

image 1 of 4

  view this image in original size ( 537 x 371 ) 0twitter thistwitter thisfacebookfacebook 

Imagine a 3-d printer so large that it can spit out entire buildings made from stone. Sounds science fiction-y, right? But that’s exactly what designer Enrico Dini created with his prototype D-Shape printer. Dini hopes to use the printer to create buildings made of stone and eventually, moon dust.

The printing process starts with a thin layer of sand. The printer then sprays the sand with magnesium-based glue from hundreds of nozzles, which binds the sand into rock. That rock is then built up layer by layer, eventually taking shape of whatever object it is destined to become, be it a curvy sculpture or an entire cathedral. Dini has even been talking with La Scuola Normale Superiore, Alta Space and Norman Foster to design a printer that would work with moon dust, essentially creating a machine that can make an almost-instant moonbase!

We’re not sure that anyone will really bring D-Shape to the moon, but it is totally amazing to think about the implications a printer like this could have on construction here on Earth. Dini claims the printer is four times faster than conventional building, costs one-third to one-half the price of Portland cement and creates very little waste, so it’s better for the environment. Color us seriously impressed.

Via Fast Company

Telegraph.co.uk

Thursday 03 May 2012

• HOME
• NEWS
• SPORT
• FINANCE
• COMMENT
• BLOGS
• CULTURE
• TRAVEL
• LIFESTYLE
• FASHION
• TECH

• Dating
• Offers
• Jobs

• Technology News
• Technology Companies
• Technology Reviews
• Video Games
• Technology Video
• Mobile App Reviews
• Blogs

• HOME»
• TECHNOLOGY

Make your own: the 3D printing revolution

Today you can make plant pots; in the future it could be phones, even houses. But should big business fear the 3D printing revolution?

Image 1 of 6The Makerbot Photo: MAKERBOT

By Horatia Harrod

11:30AM BST 01 May 2012

3 Comments

Brendan Dawes makes eggcups with his 3D printer. Enrico Dini wants to build igloos on the moon with his. Today we can print out custom-fitted teeth and titanium hip joints; tomorrow, we may be able to print out living tissue, to make new veins, new organs. With a 3D printer, someone who’s useless at making things can produce unbelievably complicated and beautiful objects. A design created on your PC can turn a spool of plastic filament − heated, melted and guided into shapes by a computer-controlled printer head − into almost anything you desire. “Think of it as a China on your desktop,” said a Google executive a few years ago.

In 1978, Dr Adrian Bowyer built his first computer. It took him every evening for a month, hand-soldering it together. Today, Bowyer’s Nascom 1, a single circuit board covered with golden traces and impenetrable black boxes, is nailed to the wall of his study. New and different machines buzz and whirr on his desktop, filling the air with the faint smell of caramereplicating rapid prototyping machines, RepRaps. Bowyer built these himself, too, but perhaps one day every home will have one, as every home has a computer.

People have been making things with 3D printers for more than 30 years. At around the same time that Bowyer was tinkering with his Nascom, a man named Wyn Kelly Swainson patented a process called stereolithography. Imagine a vat filled with clear liquid. Just below the surface of the liquid is a flat plate. A blue light skitters back and forth on the plate: a laser beam, directed by a computer to follow a design, solidifying everything it touches. The plate moves down by a fraction of a millimetre, and the laser begins its dance again. Layer by layer, an object is built. “When the process is finished,” says Bowyer, “the plate emerges from the liquid and it comes out like Venus from the half shell.”

Swainson’s basic idea – the dropping plate, the layered construction, the computer-aided design and control – has since spawned many magical machines. Perfect scale models can be made from hot wax shot out from tiny pipes attached to a printer head; electron beams can fire at lines of titanium powder, fusing them together, layer after layer; parts emerge from vats of plaster dust looking like finds from an archaeological dig.

And then there’s the RepRap and its descendants, the MakerBot and the Ultimaker and the Fab@Home. These machines don’t look sophisticated – Meccano-like skeletons of metal rods held together by plastic nubbins – nor do the objects they produce look especially refined. They’re made by a squirty icing method: plastic is squeezed out of a nozzle in incremental layers. There’s no sleek casing, but these £1,000 machines have the same ability as their £100,000 kin to make objects grow from nothing.

RELATED ARTICLES

• The perfect present - a 3D printer 

  06 Dec 2011

Around these machines, as with any new technology, you find an excitable crowd of hobbyists and visionaries, industrialists and revolutionaries. Tuning into the hubbub tends to induce anxiety: is it really possible that before the decade is out, we’ll be printing out iPhones in our printed-out homes? There are university researchers and garage tinkerers around the world who’ll tell you yes, we’re working on ways to print out electrical circuits or clear glass or concrete walls.

The farther reaches of 3D printing have a whiff of science- fiction about them. Enrico Dini is an exuberant Italian engineer who wants to build houses using a giant printer that creates organic, Gaudi-esque structures using a mixture of sand and binding agent. His company is based in London, “because I wanted to approach the private equity companies in the UK. Also I was in love, for a woman, but this is another story.” The technical and logistical problems of Dini’s D-Shape printer are immense – transporting vast quantities of sand, for one – and the financial ones even greater since the recession. Dini fears that big companies are already working on rival projects, waiting to enter the field at the right moment. “They have the capital to do 100 times better than me what I did,” he says.

Such is Dini’s passion for the technology that nothing will put a stopper on his ambitions. His latest project is to build a Foster and Partners-designed structure on the moon using a 3D printer working with binder and moon dust. The first deep vacuum trials were a success. (Last summer, an object – a spanner – was printed in zero gravity for the first time; being able to manufacture complex objects quickintervention, mean that 3D printing is an ideal outer-space technology.) “If I don’t put my life on the table to demonstrate today that this is feasible,” he says, “everything might become a flop.” So he carries on.

Space igloos will always be more appealing than eggcups. But what’s happening at the lower end of the 3D printing market is just as radical as what’s going on at the top end, if for different reasons.

You might not know anyone with a 3D printer yet, but, says Neil Gershenfeld, head of the Center for Bits and Atoms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “digital personal fabrication has been growing exponentially, and the ways these exponentials work is that there’s a kind of barrier to perception. You may think nothing’s happening and then suddenly there’s a revolution.” Brooklyn-based MakerBot has sold around 6,000 machines, to tech-savvy early adopters like the aforementioned eggcup maker, Brendan Dawes. But we don’t know how many 3D printers there are out there – some, like the RepRap, can make their own parts and reproduce themselves. Bowyer designed them to be “evolutionarily stable”: RepRaps offer people goods so that people will build them, just as flowers offer bees nectar so that they’ll carry their pollen.

Another problem with the perception of desktop 3D printers is that the things people are making at home right now don’t look that exciting. Take the Thingiverse, a website where people upload photographs and design files of things they’ve designed and made themselves. There are plastic kittens. Plastic door stops. Plastic plant pots. Plastic toy planes. Plastic widgets and encoder wheels and screw isolators and servo wheels, individual parts to improve your printer but not much else.

But just when your inner cynic starts to kick in, because homemade plastic tchotchkes don’t look much more appealing than ones made in Taiwan, someone will tell you a cautionary tale. Gershenfead of a company called the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), in 1977 Olsen made a famous pronouncement: “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” As Gershenfeld says today, “Now DEC is bankrupt, and you have a computer at home.” Underestimating the potential for new technologies to adapt, evolve and thrive can make you look stupid.

Once you’ve got over the fact that, yes, if people are given the chance to make anything they want, they’ll make carrot holders, the Thingiverse shows us something important. What’s extraordinary about the growth of 3D printing is how democratic it is. When people design things, they can easily share the digital files so that others can copy them. Once you’ve got the file you can tweak or customise it to suit you. “If your needs are the same as everyone else on the planet, you can just buy the same mass-produced product,” says Gershenfeld. “But if you want a telephone with a wildly different shape, or custom train track, you can do that.” Bowyer published the details of his first RepRap machine online to keep the technology free. He did so, he says, “for an uncharacteristically noble reason. It seemed to me that this was a very powerful technology, and if you try to create ownership over it, you divide the world into haves and have nots, and that’s a way to make bad things happen.”

There’s a revolutionary flavour to this conversation. Are there industries, “haves”, that ought to be watching their backs? “The people who should be threatened largely aren’t,” says Gershenfeld. “Because they consider these toys. By the time they are threatened, it’ll be too late.”

At the Royal College of Art, you can see why the technology has the power to divide. Walking between the rooms of the Rapidform studio, the machines look anything but toylike. A huge titanium printer is covered in mathematical formulae – “It’s a bit of a black art to operate it,ere is a smell, which I identify as soy sauce, but is in fact a melange of many noxious chemicals. (Compare with Adrian Bowyer’s RepRaps, which run on a starch-based plastic called polylactic acid, and give off a sweet smell.)

Within the bland industrial casing of these machines are produced items of baroque strangeness and beauty, which can be seen in glass cases mounted on the corridor walls: a titanium face pouting angrily, a resin dog with antlers, a tiny, perfectly formed wax seashell. The latter two were created by scanning real objects, scaling them up or down, possibly adding antlers, and printing them out.

That’s why the debate between traditional craftspeople and digital designers is getting lively. “Traditionally,” says Grace, “the non-maker had to rely on another human being to help him out. Now they can do it all themselves. There’s a lot of Luddite mentality attached to it, a lot of fear. Some people think that in order for something to be good it has to be difficult to achieve, and for someone to achieve something easily, it’s just not fair.”

When Grace shows me how to use some design software, I reconsider what he means by “easily”. As I clumsily make holes in a 3D cube on the screen, I wonder how long it would take me to design something worth printing. According to James Russell, the College’s Computer Aided Design Advisor, it wouldn’t take more than a few weeks to master the technology. But, he admits, “Making the software more accessible to the masses is what needs to happen next.” Or I could just copy something else.

At the beginning of last year an app called Trimensional was launched which allows you to scan objects with your iPhone. It’s not accurate – the scans I made of my colleagues’ faces would suggest that the Telegraphis staffed by troglodytes – but it only costs 69p, compared to the thousands you would pay for a decent desktop scanner.

The point is this: as scannersre refined, we will be able to create design files for all the objects we own or covet. Once you have the file, you can find a way to print it out, either at home, or at one of the printing bureaus that are opening thanks to enterprising start-ups like Sculpteo and Shapeways.

This seems like murky territory. But as it happens, design items in the UK are afforded very poor protection against copying. At best, designs can be registered for 25 years. They’re treated as industrial products rather than artworks, which can be given copyright stretching to 70 years after the death of the creator. But even if our design protection is brought into line with the stronger laws which operate in the EU, what’s to stop someone from copying, for example, a lamp they like in the privacy of their own home?

With each passing year more and more of our lives become digitalised: the music we listen to, the photographs we take, the films and television we watch, the things we read. There was a phrase Gershenfeld used that stuck with me, perhaps because it sounded so fantastically Star Trekkian: “programming physical reality”. Turning what’s on the screen into what we have around us.

It’s frightening, because it’s new, and because some people – designers, craftspeople, manufacturers – could lose out because of it. But don’t be too afraid. “For centuries we’ve been passing through these transitions,” says Gershenfeld. “It takes us back to racing horses against steam trains. The trains won, but we still have horses.”

This article also appeared in SEVEN magazine, free with the Sunday Telegraph. Follow SEVEN on Twitter @TelegraphSeven

PROGRAM SCHEDULE MORE INFO COMPETITION VISITING LEUVEN DATABASE DISTRIBUTION PREVIOUS EDITIONS HOMEorder tickets               Select date                              Wednesday 2 May (20u00)                              Thursday 3 May (17u00)                              Saturday 5 May (21u45)                             

THE MAN WHO PRINTS HOUSES (EUROPESE PREMIERE)

   

• home
• progetto
• sass muss
• altri siti
• artisti
• residenza
• curatori
• lavori
• mostre
• press
• ita/eng
• 
• 
• 

dc || 9 marzo 2012

dc a kunstart 12

dolomiti contemporanee partecipa a kunstart 12

biennal art fair for emerging contemporary art

16-18 marzo – bolzano

giovedì 15 marzo ore 18.00 inaugurazione

venerdì 16 marzo ore 11.00 apertura fiera

dc sarà a kunstart 12 con due stand.

il primo (stand a37) in condivisione con artesella.

nello stand b07-29, saranno esposte le opere “a blu pill” di minji kim e “love song by armstrongs”, dialessandro dal pont.

questi due lavori sono inseriti nella sezione focus korea, dedicata alle gallerie e agli artisti della corea del sud, e saranno presentati domenica 18 marzo, alle ore 14.30, presso la sala vajolet, da gianluca d’incà levis.

nello stand dc, sarà possibile trovare i materiali relativi ai progetti avviati per la stagione 2012.

verrà esposto un lavoro fotografico inedito di mario tomè.

inoltre, sarà presentato il prototipo di cr6, opera di jonathan vivacqua realizzata in collaborazione condolomiti contemporanee.

cr6 non è un lavoro compiuto, definitivo.

quest’opera è piuttosto uno degli stadi di un processo, avviato già da qualche mese (primo passaggio all’attivo artissima lido 2011), che prevede, traverso diverse fasi, di giungere a realizzare un oggetto progettato che sia al tempo stesso volume plastico e struttura arrampicabile.

la scultura arrampicabile è diverse cose in una.

cr6 è un’opera di jonathan vivacqua, che prosegue sulla linea di ricerca di “il mio mezzo spave; parte della collezione di carrozzeria margot.

cr6 è un oggetto plastico nuovo, nel quale la riflessione dell’artista sul territorio, sulla montagna, sulle pratiche dell’alpinismo e dell’arrampicata, si concentrano in punti di forza e vengono sintetizzate in una forma.

cr6 è una una sintesi geometrica di elementi topografici (diagramma strutturale delle cime) e immaginifici, una struttura performabile, una summa di elementi estetici e culturali legati all’idea erta del salire.

il prototipo presentato a kunstart è realizzato grazie al coinvolgimento nel progetto dolomiti contemporaneedi un nuovo partner, d-shape, azienda leader in italia nell’ambito della tecnologia di stampa litografica 3d.

il prototipo cr6 è la base di un progetto con cui dolomiti contemporanee riflette, attraverso il medium dell’arte contemporanea, sull’identità del territorio dolomitico/alpino, sulla montagna e sulle nude pratiche alpinistiche e d’arrampicata.

cr6 è il modello in scala di una scultura arrampicabile alta dieci metri, che si prevede di realizzare nei prossimi mesi.

non una struttura votata alla performance sportiva, ma un oggetto plastico da salire, ovvero un oggetto generatore e attivatore di rapporti.

una mutua scultura può giacere sul piedistallo di un museo per secoli, per secoli la si con-templa. come si guarda, fiore in bocca, una montagna dal basso.

e salirla, non è come guardarla. cr6 non è un tempio, ma uno spazio consentito-analizzato-riformalizzato-sintetizzato in un solido durodipietra.

uno spazio di pensiero/azione.

il prototipo presentato a kunstart è realizzato da d-shape, azienda leader in italia nella teca litografica 3d. in sostanza, con la tecnologia d-shape, si stampano oggetti e volumi, invece di cartoline. in un processo di stampa a strati sovrapposti su fogli di sabbia dolomitica, si da forma ad un oggetto progettato. questo processo di “stampa stratigrafica”, che richiede un ciclo di venti giorni, è a sua volta una specie di modello che replica, ovviamente accelerandolo e concentrandolo, il processo evolutivo di costituzione delledolomiti.

il prototipo di cr6 è uno dei passi iniziali che dovranno condurre alla realizzazione dell’opera in scala reale, un volume plastico arrampicabile alto diversi metri, che sarà collocato in un luogo significativo in ambito dolomitico. (immagine di sass: giacomo de donà – sviluppo prototipo e render a cura di mirko forti)

di ritorno da kunstart 12, la fiera d’arte contemporanea di bolzano, ecco le impressioni, quel che abbiamo colto;
lassù in quelle terre un po’ frigide d’alto adige, dove alcuni, come l’ottuso portinaio del werth, stanno dritti, o si piegano a scatti, nella custodia scricchiolante dell’involucro;
lassù, ce ne son pure di vivi; ed ecco infatti che lì fraulein nina stricker, nuova direttrice della fiera, ha scaturito una scintilla, che ha attraversato le membra di questo cadavere insepolto (la fiera d’arte contemporanea stessa, di cui a quanto pare molti lassù, già paghi delle loro buone cose ordinarie -lo statuto speciale/ordinario- che vanno, imburrate sul pane nero, non sentivano alcun bisogno), scuotendolo per un attimo, e generando, nel moto galvanico, la possibilità di una ri-esistenza, l’ipotesi di una rinascita;
perfino il clamoroso refuso topografico che ha interdetto la provincia nostra (sass muss è finito in alto adigenella carta inserita nello speciale artribune pubblicato in 50.000 copie) noi lo interpretiamo come sintomo (pur goffo) di uno spirito cultione che è, per una volta, visone d’apertura, e non anschluss o sopraffazione;
l’obiettivo primario per nina stricker e valerio dehò (il curator) era in effetti questo: superare l’emergenza; dare una scossa; mostrare la possibilità di un progetto di rilancio, cambiamento, sopravvivenza, superamento, rinnovamento, apertura;
il colpo si è sentito, per la tepida valle, e questo conta; ecco perché parrebbe cosa miope il soffermarsi ora su alcuni aspetti a proposito della qualità e del livello, inevitabilmente non ineccepibili, della fiera, che nasce oggi, e quindi non è artissima (e d’altro canto nemmeno artissima è basilea, e nemmeno il fiacre, e tutti prima si nasce, poi si cresce, tranne forse alcuni poveri beoti ipnotizzati dai profeti del rebirthing);
aggiungo poi che, se invece si decide di soffermarsi, entrando in merito delle cose vista, è meglio farlo con attenzione: se uno segnala, rispetto a quanto detto sopra della fiera, lo stand artigiano di unika come presenza stimolante (questo nel redazionale web di franz), quell’uno non sa guardare, o cogliere la scintilla; la speranza della fiera sta nell’ammazzare i clichè e la pratiche arcaiche e tradizionali, quelle dei bei legnetti, ad esempio, per proporre qualcosa di nuovo, forme-pensiero, non sculture-arredo, pur ben eseguite; quelli da citare sono goethe, cattani, boccanera, es, kooio e art depot di innsbruck, transart, museion, e dc.
la fiera a bolzano non c’era più; era un morto steso stecchito; ora c’è una creatura in bozzolo, rianimata seduta, che già non pare uno zombie, che non poteva esser da subito un angelo; e dunque, avanti, guardando a modelli, anche recenti, di rinnovamento intelligente, come ad esemdents difuoribiennale ad artverona; e chi crede che la fiera debba essere solo commercio (o che il commercio possa venire solo dal commercio, e non, ad esempio, da un progetto culturale aggressivo che rompe-gli-argini, rimodula e rilancia, cavando linfa e scuotendo le inerzie), chi lo crede, è una capra o un rigattiere e pigro e acefalo;
azione redente, diciamo sempre; (e meglio le calze pop-comics-garden dei beati blu di prussia, e pure di quell’inflazione di palchi cromatici di corna);

dc era in kunstart con due stand; lo stand madre, dove abbiamo presentato il prototipo di cr6, lavoro dijonathan vivacqua; cr6 è un progetto/processo a fasi che si realizza grazie alla collaborazione tra jonathan vivacqua e dolomiti contemporanee, ed alla collaborazione iniziale di carrozzeria margot, che dopo l’avviamento lascia ora il progetto; il prototipo presentato a kunstart è stato realizzato grazie alla sfavillante tecnologia dinitech/d-shape, nuovo partner di dc, insieme a cui già si prospettano nuove spettacolari avventure; la macchina litografica 3d dei fratelli dini ha prodotto questo stampato poetico di roccia sedimentaria; il disegno di jonathan è stato sviluppato e ingegnerizzato da mirko forti industrial design; nello stand madre abbiamo parlato per tre giorni sempre, aperto canali, come chirurghi aortici, stipulato contratti di nuvola riflettente, dato fondo a tra casse di birra dolomiti (grazie anche ad acqua dolomia, partesa, trasporti da rold); le tre casse, insieme ad erwin seppi, christian martinelli, federico lanaro, massimo simonetti, elisa decet, mauro e brigitte vendruscolo, laurina paperina, lucia uni, annelie bortolotti, piero casagrande, paolo ariano dal pont, bea, fabiano, alessandro e minji, jonathan e valentina e francesco e jacopo, andrea e falluja e demis, mafmilla, lotta, agathe, romina, e gli altri che son passati e hanno parlato e pensato e innescato insieme a noi;
il secondo stand, inserito nel focus korea, ha ospitato invece i lavori di minji kim e alessandro dal pont; questo stand è stato concepito come una mostra, in cui gli artisti hanno messo in dialogo due microcosmi di senso, creando una serie di relazioni poetiche e plastiche tra le opere, entrambe di matrice scultorea, entrambe portatrici di molti spunti e riflessioni.

stand kunstart focus korea minji kim/alessandro dal pont 
minji kim, a blue pill, 2010, marmo, 29 x 39 x 18 cm.
alessandro dal pont, love song by armstrongs, 2012, legno, stampa plotter su carta, dimensioni variabili.

minji kim (seul 1975) e alessandro dal pont (feltre 1972) sono marito e moglie, e vivono entrambi a berlino. nel dialogo instaurato tra due opere scultoree presentate, risultano subito evidenti le reciproche contaminazioni culturali, ovvero la naturale ed inevitabile influenza della cultura dell’uno sull’altra e viceversa. vari stereotipi risultano rovesciati…dal loro accostamento scaturisce un universo semantico ricco quanto ambiguo.
entrambe le sculture sembrano esprimere la volontà di elevarsi; entrambe sono costruite su una struttura dicotomica.

il lavoro di minji, a blu pill, riflette in termini critici/clinici sulla scentratura di un certo sguardo contemporaneo, che sembra ormai incapace di attivare da solo una corretta modalità ricettiva rispetto all’opera, ai suoi valori e significati intrinseci.
“questo marmo, come simbolo di una lunga tradizione dell’arte, difende, anche se con un aiuto artificiale, la propria posizione all’interno del recente trend dell’arte contemporanea che appare piuttosto effimero sia nella forma che nei contenuti.” (minji kim).

in love song by armstrongs, dal pont accorpa di vista sul satellite terrestre. quello da terra, rappresentato dalla romantica veduta notturna della luna attraverso i rami di un albero, e quello dalla luna stessa, registrato dall’obiettivo fotografico degli astronauti. i due approcci, quello letterario/artistico e quello scientifico, non sono chiaramente in contraddizione tra di loro ma piuttosto si ispirano e alimentano a vicenda. il titolo dell’opera fa riferimento ai due grandi armstrong del novecento, neil e louis, l’astronauta e il musicista jazz, figure emblematiche di questi due differenti approcci che sembrano incontrarsi nell’opera.

cerca

 

archivio media

foto
video
docs

dc - concept

il progetto

dc è un progetto in cui una selezione di curatori ed artisti viene a cimentarsi con lo speciale ambiente dolomitico, costituito di natura e uomini, di spazio, roccia, aria (sottile), progressioni verticali. progetti ed opere si relazionano con le emergenze (non solo ambientali) di questa regione. lo spazio fornisce dunque il materiale, i soggetti –particolari, oppure generali-, i temi -oppure i pretesti- agli artisti, che intavolano le proprie riflessioni –o deflessioni. una serie di interventi installativi viene realizzata in diversi luoghi specifici, individuati all’interno di quest’ambito territoriale alpino 
leggi il resto

fuoriluoghi itinerari didattici

musica e performance

come arrivare

orari

si ringrazia

enti promotori

fondamentale sostegno

altri sponsor

Printable houses are coming

April 11, 2012

Italian inventor Enrico Dini has developed a huge 3D printer called D-Shape that can print entire buildings out of sand, The printer sprays a thin layer of sand followed by a layer of magnesium-based binder from hundreds of nozzles on its underside. The glue turns the sand to solid stone, which is built up layer-by-layer from the bottom up to form anything from a sculpture to a sandstone building. (Credit: Monolite UK Ltd.)

The first “printed homes” will be coming soon, says World Future Society blogger Thomas Frey.

One construction technology that has great potential for low-cost, customized buildings is “contour crafting — a form of 3D printing that uses robotic arms and nozzles to squeeze out layers of concrete or other materials, moving back and forth over a set path to fabricate a large component.

Structures would be quicker to make, reducing energy and emissions. Using a quick-setting, concrete-like material, contour crafting forms the house’s walls layer by layer until topped off by floors and ceilings that are set into place by the crane.

Printed houses can take advantage of nonlinear but sturdy forms made from concrete (credit: Loughborough University)

Other far-reaching opportunities include constructing rapid shelters after natural disasters, operational structures on the moon out of moon dust, and cheap houses for people in impoverished countries.

A natural extension of printing new buildings will be devices that recycle the old ones. Ideally, the old material will be ground up and reformulated into new composites that can be re-printed into whatever is needed.

By replacing our tradchniques for pouring concrete, 3D printers could be used to print driveways, sidewalks, benches, fences, foundations, and much more.

Small bots will be used to create seamless coatings on the tops of houses. The small army of people needed to reroof a house today will be replaced with a single person who’s job is to place the bot at its initial starting point and make sure there is a consistent supply of material to coat the entire roof.

Walls will no longer need to be flat surfaces. Every wall can be designed with textures, protrusions, and artistic designs to put an end to the dreadful uniformity in our homes today.

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science

21st Century Renaissance. La Nuova Architettura.

Most of us nowadays feel a certain regret by living in an age like this. An age where human creativity applied to thousand-years disciplines seem to have reached an intellectual overflow. 
If You feel like one of these wretched individuals wondering through our hi-tech spacetime You must take a visit to Pisa. Why?
Almost a decade ago, a man had a dream; unlike most of us, He decided that his dream had to be something real. So He put himself in the service of his ideal and today He’s able to realize buildings with a 3D printer.
Before our visit to Dinitech last week, We thought that the idea to do so was so peculiar, such as extravagant seemed to us the inspiration that gave birth to such an invention. Our biases towards Dinitech where immediatly denied by a few samples present in the hangar.
Enrico Dini in his vision, followed by his brother Riccardo (exquisite people) created something that potentially is capable to change the construction segment. A manna for architects, not to be underestimated by those that are convinced that in our era traditional disciplines cannot evolve.
So please, take our advice You baffled friends. Open your eyes.

See Enrico Dini’s interviews
Il Sole 24ore 
Adnkronos
Il Tirreno

Molti di noi si sentono particolarmente rammaricati di vivere in un’epoca come la nostra. Un’epoca dove sembra sia già stato detto tutto nei riguardi delle discipline millenarie e non c’è più altro da aggiungere. Se vi sentite anche voi così dispiaciuti nel vagare nel nostro tecnologico spaziotempo dovete fare una gita a Pisa. Perché?
Circa un decennio fa, un uomo ebbe un sogno, a differenza di altri decise che questo sogno doveva diventare qualcosa di reale. Quindi si è buttato a capofitto in questo sogno ed oggi costruisce edifici con una stampante 3D.
Prima della nostra visita alla Dinitech avvenuta la settimana scorsa eravamo scettici. Credevamo l’idea tanto originale quanto stravaganti erano le nostre supposizioni su come quest’idea fosse nata in origine. I nostri pregiudizi nei confronti della Dinitech sono spariti non appena visto i pochi manufatti presenti nel loro laboratorio.
Enrico Dini, nella sua visione, accompagnato dal fratello Riccardo (persone squisite) ha creato qualcosa che potenzialmente ha la capacità di rivoluzionare l’edilizia. Una manna per gli architetti, e non da sottovalutare da chi crede che nella nostra era le discipline classiche non possono evolversi.
Per cui vi prego scettici amici, seguite il nostro consiglio. Aprite gli occhi.

Passera incontra i guru dei 'makers'

Vota:

Votata: 2volte,

Indice di gradimento: 5

Riunione informale di circa un'ora tra il ministro dello Sviluppo economico Corrado Passera e Chris Anderson (direttore di Wired Usa), Dale Dougherty (fondatore di Make Magazine) e Massimo Banzi, imprenditore italiano autore di software open source.

• Condividi:
 
• 
 
• 
 
• 
 
• 

• 
• 
 
• 
• 
• 

Il violinista Sebastiano Frattini suona uno strumento creato con una stampante 3D

Roma, 10-03-2012

Al centro del colloquio i modelli di business fortemente innovativi affrontati durante il World Wide Rome, meeting internazionale ha riunito nella capitale centinaia di 'makers'.

Passera ha espresso particolare soddisfazione per il fatto che si sia scelto di tenere questo meeting proprio in Italia e a Roma, e ha assicurato agli organizzatori la massima disponibilita' del governo per favorire la crescita, anche nel nostro Paese, di questa nuova filosofia di business.

'World Wide Rome', dedicata all'economia della Rete e ai nuovi artigiani e creativi digitali, e' un evento, organizzato da Tecnopolo Spa e Asset Camera, Azienda speciale della Camera di Commercio di Roma. Ha visto sfilare 28 relatori tra italiani e stranieri, in particolare i giovani makers, che considerano la Rete la scommessa del futuro.

Massimi esponenti della corrente digitale italiana sono Massimo Banzi, inventore di 'Arduino', l'hardware open source utilizzato in diversi Paesi, ed Enrico Dini, pioniere italiano di questa disciplina. E, poi, spazio alla testimonianza di Chris Anderson, uno dei piu' grandi teorici della filosofia maker.

Skip to content

• Home

← Open Source DesignWhy Park Hill Should Live →

The World’s First Printed Building

Posted on September 23, 2011 by cosmopolitanscum

Although, technically, the d-shape process requires no human intervention, the machine sometimes benefits from a good whack with a hammer

In a small shed on an industrial park near Pisa is a machine that can print buildings. The machine itself looks like a prototype for the automotive industry. Four columns independently support a frame with a single armature on it. Driven by CAD software installed on a dust-covered computer terminal, the armature moves just millimetres above a pile of sand, expressing a magnesium-based solution from hundreds of nozzles on its lower side. It makes four passes. The layer dries and Enrico Dini recalibrates the armature frame. The system deposits the sand and then inorganic binding ink. The exercise is repeated. The millennia-long process of laying down sedimentary rock is accelerated into a day. A building emerges. This machine could d to construct anything. Dini wants to build a cathedral with it. Or houses on the moon.

Dini’s machine marks a vital step change from the shoebox-size 3D printing of today, to tomorrow’s ability to print complete structures on site. Although others have been working hard on the prototype, Dini’s machine is ahead of the pack, with the Architectural Association beating several others to get to the first marketable version. The conceptual leap from modelling to manufacture may seem small, but making it has taken seven years of Dini’s personal endeavour in the face of bankruptcy and, when his ex-wife said she doubted his ability to complete the project, it cost him his marriage.

Not that Dini shows much respect for his invention. His brother Ricardo is a talented mechanical engineer who also works on the project and proposed some of its defining features – the single armature for example. Today though he is beating recalcitrant parts of it with a hammer. Enrico refers to a pin system for calibrating the height of the frame as ‘this fucking device’. He is exasperated by its limitations. ‘My machine is stupid,’ he fumes. Perhaps there is certain dumbness to the binary logic of its on/off secretions compared to the complexity of the robots he once made for the shoe industry.

Dini’s background is in offline programming systems for six-axis robots. ‘Industrial robots are programmed by self-teaching. You bring the arm of the robot to a point, it memorises the point and then you bring it to another point and then you tell the robot to reapply this movement,’ he explains. This machine is different, less precise but more impressive.

Layers of sand are bound together to create a marble-like material, in effect turning it back into solid stone. The process includes internal curves, ducting and interior partitions. Here, hollow columns are being constructed from the base up

A 5mm-wide stream spreads out over the dust, becoming a 10mm layer when solid. Because the two components mix outside the nozzle, the machine does not clog up and can maintain an accuracy of around 25 dots per inch. The resulting material is solid stone. Dini may have simply brought together existing technologies and supercharged them with robotics but the implications are massive: digital architecture made real. Stone prefabrications. Printing housing estates.

‘Enrico can build your digital dreams,’ says the architect Andrea Morgante with a smile. Morgante, formerly of Future Systems and now in practice on his own, first met a rather desperate Dini in London in 2008 when the Italian inventor was touting his technology, known as d-shape, around London architectural practices. Hadid’s office was intrigued enough to go and have a look. Foster and Partners was sniffing around it too. Morgante was as taken by the warmth of his fellow Italian as by the possibilities of the technology. Indeed, Dini, a perfect host, is garrulous and open to a fault. One dreads to think of how he could be taken advantage of by the private equity firms and architects he’s constantly courting in London.

Morgante however is his perfect foil, an Italian who understands how the London architecture establishment thinks. ‘[Enrico] wanted something challenging that showed what the technology could do. I developed this model which I knew that in other construction techniques or methods would be either quite difficult or very expensive,’ says Morgante. Together they are working on a proof of principle pavilion for a roundabout in the nearby town of Pontedera; eggshell named and designed after radiolarians, marine protozoa that produce intricate mineral skeletons.

In the soft light of a Tuscan afternoon, the nine cubic metre maquette of the structure glows. Next to it are sections of the final structure. Due to the confines of the roundabout, Morgante and Dini have decided to print the building in parts before assembling it on site. ‘If you were pouring concrete into a mould or milling marble it would be three times the price,’ says Morgante of the Radiolaria. Morgante’s work at Future Systems, which created the Media Centre at Lords Cricket Ground in London and Selfridges in Birmingham means that he understands the architectural implications of Dini’s machine. ‘I also knew that with organic shapes there was always an extra price to pay for curvy things. You want curves you have to pay,’ he says. Not any more. One of the many implications of Dini’s machine is that it could bring an avant-garde tradition of architecture into the mainstream almost immediately.

This is not the only implication. The otherwise affable Enrico Dini is finding it difficult to cope with all the implications. ‘I’ve been working in solitude and been unknown for several years. There was no pressure. I was just by myself,’ says Dini.

Dini claims the d-shape process is four times faster than conventional building, costs a third to a half as much as using Portland cement, creates little waste and is better for the environment. But its chief selling point may simply be that it makes creating Gaudiesque, curvy structures simple

In 2002 he had presented a robot that could make bespoke shoes. He unveiled it though just as Italian shoe manufacture collapsed and production moved abroad. He realised he’d have to reappltics to another industry. For a while, he looked at creating hydrogen for future transport vehicles from wave power. Then in 2004, he began experimenting with 3D printing using epoxy resin, inventing and patenting a full-scale 3D printing method that used epoxy to bind sand. Enrico could now 3D-print buildings.

Epoxy resin sticks to anything – including the machine that is applying it. This led to high maintenance costs for the machines as well as inefficiencies when they were used. Enrico went back to the drawing board to invent anew. In 2007 he got a new patent for a system using an inorganic binding material and any old sand to 3D print buildings. ‘When I realized that nobody was going to give us money to develop it, I decided to fund the research. I remortgaged my house and borrowed money from my father,’ he says. In 2008 he printed the maquette for Radiolaria and since then, he’s been bombarded with ideas but no concrete funds for development.

Those that talk about how recessions are times for productive thinking and activity tend to have steady jobs. The realisation of Enrico Dini’s goals was seriously derailed at the end of 2008 when a large Italian cement manufacturer that had come forward as a major investor pulled out due to the credit crunch. Dini was forced to visit London, a city he now knows well, to tout his machine around.

‘I came to London because of architecture, private equity and love,’ he says. The last at least has been good to him. His partner, Anna, is Italian but has lived in London for 13 years. But private equity has been of little use and it is only now that architecture is coming round. The Architectural Association has approached him in order to buy a kind of working prototype – through which knowledge can be shared.

Others are circling. Dini is pleased but doesn’t see it as an ultimate goal. A Belgian prototyping company has approached him to produce stone furniture. In the corner of the studio stands Dini’s version of what looks suspiciously like a Joris Laarman chaise longue. ‘They said the original is in MOMA but I don’t know who it is by,’ he shrugs, underwhelmed. Later he admits his real interest lies in producing buildings. ‘What I really want to do is to use the machine to complete the Sagrada Familia. And to build on the moon.’

***

Enrico Dini became an engineer because of his father Egisto, who taught Automotive Engineering at Pisa University. Egisto’s career-defining job though was as head of the Calculation Department at the celebrated Piaggio factory from the end of the war. He was a key member of the team that became one of the genuine legends of engineering that Corradino D’Ascanio set up to work on the helicopter and the Vespa scooter. Egisto was known by workers at Piaggio as The Great Unknown because of his thoughtfulness. Enrico seems to be more like his uncle, the garrulous and brilliantly named Dino Dini who was director of the Institute of Machinery at Pisa from 1965 to 1983 before spending some time working with NASA in Pasadena and writing a major work on missile manufacture. He spent his later years back at the University in Pisa as head of the Department of Energy, working on water-fuelled cars among other things. Enrico’s machine is the product of some serious engineering DNA.

It’s also the product of Pisa, a city with which the Dini name is intertwined. ‘I have been helped by a lot of friends in Pisa. There’s a very ics and physics here. From this substrata came the development of national computing, which in Italy happened first in Pisa in the early 1970s. Since then there has grown a whole generation of informatics and IT people here. I found good people to drive the software for the machine. I have been helped by some very smart people that I enabled to make a lot of money in the past,’ he says, smiling. One also senses that his remarkable machine was also inspired by the city in a more poetic but to Dini, equally significant way.

Enrico’s father tells a story about the Second World War. The family home was close to the Ponte Mezzo in the heart of old Pisa. One day, while eating lunch, the family heard the sound of approaching US bombers. ‘Don’t worry,’ said grandfather Dini. ‘Pisa is an open town. The Americans won’t bomb us.’ The rumble of the planes grew louder. ‘Er, are you sure, Dad?’ said his father. ‘I’m sure,’ said his father. Two minutes later the American bombers emptied their payload on the bridges along the Arno and the Dini family was running through the streets. After the war, his father, newly graduated, worked for the Ministry of Public Works, engineering the replacement bridges before he was head hunted by D’Asconio for Piaggio.

Architect Andrea Morgante is working with Dini on the Radiolaria pavilion

Egisto Dini also helped build the roof on the Camposanto, another casualty of the American raids, a beautiful cloistered cemetery, tucked behind the Leaning Tower and the City’s Cathedral. Built in the 13th Century, the Camposanto’s flagstones are the graves of the town’s dignitaries. Inscribed on one stone is the name of Enrico Pistolesi, an expert in propeller dynamics who died in 1968 and was a mentor to the young Egafter Pistolesi and his name therefore is literally part of the built fabric of Pisa, a city known throughout the world for the malleability of its architecture. The Leaning Tower is a daily reminder that what we think is most solid is plastic. Enrico’s uncle has contributed to the scientific discussion on how the building is preserved.

Another Dini, Ulisse Dini, who was Enrico’s great uncle, is also buried in the Camposanto. A great mathematician his name is found all over the city. A statue of Enrico’s great uncle stands on Ulisse Dini street. Every city has a statue that is regularly adorned by the public. In Glasgow it’s the statue of Wellington that has a traffic cone on its head. In Pisa, it’s Ulisse Dini and a can of beer. Caught in the middle of declaiming the theorem to which he gave his name, his left hand is conveniently sculpted in such a way as to hold an empty can, a fact which makes Enrico almost as proud as the theorem. As a second year student, he was given an oral examination for his mathematics course and was of course asked to explain Dini’s Theorem, which, according to Enrico, helps ‘systematise infinitesimal calculations’.

It would be easy to overstate the importance of Enrico Dini’s personal history in the production of his printing machine. Much of his expertise is highly specialised, marrying CAD-driven informatics and top-end robotics to a chemical process he doesn’t fully understand. As we pass the chemistry department in the engineering department, Dini half-jokes that whenever he is trying to perfect his structural link by adding fibres or even new chemicals, he calls them up to see if its OK to do so. A couple of times they’ve said: ‘No! Don’t add that!’ Yet, Dini, a self-confessed ‘bad student’ has what his forefathers lacked, the entrepreneurial gene, and is able to co-opt other learning quickly. Before the Radiolaria pavilion begins construction in the spring, it is undergoing the results o tests. All looks positive.

Isaac Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants. Dini’s relationship with the European Space Agency gives some idea of the scale of his ambition. Through his academic contacts Dini heard about the European Space Agency Aurora programme, which was established by the agency to devise, and then implement, a plan for robotic and human exploration of the solar system, with the Moon and Mars as the most likely targets, and to establish a more permanent presence on the Moon.

Dini beams confidence despite receiving a tepid reception from British venture capitalists and the architectural establishment in London

He realised quickly that tenders must be undertaken with partners with experience of working in space and approached Alta Space, an expert in propulsion technologies. It is one of the many spin-out companies that have emerged from Pisa’s fertile research ecology. He also brought in experts from the elite college La Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and, famously, Norman Foster.

The project is not as fanciful as it sounds. The idea is to create a robot that could take the regolithic powder found on the moon and make buildings from it, using advanced sensor technology being developed by La Scuola Normale Superiore and propulsion devices created by Alta Space. In addition it would presumably create large structures in the manner of Foster and Partners. Given the way the practice’s buildings often go against the urban grain, the moon seems ideal.

One can’t help admire Foster though. Dini approached him in the hope of securing funding or work, yet the Machiavellian lord ends up getting work out of Dini – a nice research contract in space technology, an area he’s long been fascinated with. Foster and Part to be cagey about Dini. There has clearly been much discussion with the practice but, the research contract aside, nothing solid has come out of it yet. The firm invited him to test his machine on making some cladding for Masdar City, Abu Dhabi. Dini, excited by the idea of using waste from the desalination process, tried to make paving slabs and cladding with salt. ‘It was a disaster,’ says Dini.

His architectural friends are keeping quiet about the Aurora contract too, although perhaps that is wise. The contract was nearly jeopardised at the end of last year, when Dini excitedly told me about the project and the story was picked up by the nationals who ran it under the headline ‘Norman Foster to build on the Moon.’ The European Space Agency was not pleased. Dini’s consortium, including Foster and Partners, still got the contract though.

Large-scale rapid prototyping using Dini’s inorganic ‘ink’ works far better than Dini’s first attempts at 3D

One wonders how such a warm and open individual as Enrico Dini will fare in this environment. His ambition stretches to the biggest challenges in architecture – including finishing Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which has been under construction since 1882.

Dini has been working closely with James Gardiner and Professor Mark Burry of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, which is researching the incomplete Gaudí building. Gardiner has spent three months working alongside Dini in Pisa and believes that Dini’s machine is the closest to the market. ‘We hope to use d_shape to complete the cathedral,’ says Dini. He also jokes about printing a replica Leaning Tower.

In his essay Dreaming in the Middle Ages,Eco, discerned, ‘a fantastic neomedievalism’ in contemporary Italian society. With the medieval street pattern of Pisa as its backdrop, the Dini family as a latter day guild of physicists and robotics experts and d_shape as a modern day cathedral building machine, it is easy to be seduced by this idea. Yet Pisa is also a place of enlightenment. It was in Pisa Cathedral that Galileo Galilei observed the swinging lanterns. From this he posited that pendulums have a constant period, and developed his Law of Inertia. It is a place where heretics give birth to new thinking and new technology. It is a place where Enrico Dini fits in perfectly.

D-Shape, plotter per case 3D

MERCOLEDÌ 24 NOVEMBRE 2010 11:06 NEWS-TECH- SARANNO FAMOSICostruita in due settimane, la CasaTuttaDiUnPezzo è stata realizzata da un unico pezzo di pietra

Fino al prossimo 6 gennaio sarà possibile visitare nello spazio antistante la Triennale di Milano il progetto UnaCasaTuttaDiUnPezzo realizzato dall'architetto Marco Ferreri con l'uso di D-Shape Technology.

Tecnologia D-Shape
Inventata dall'ingegnere pisano Enrico Dini, Amministratore delegato Dinitech, D-Shape è una tecnologia per stampare in 3D la pietra in un pezzo unico. Il sistema di costruzione si basa sul principio dellastereofotografia che consente di realizzare strutture di qualsiasi forma e dimensione usando unicamente sabbia unita a uno speciale reagente inorganico perfettamente ecocompatibile.

Il cuore della tecnologia è la testa di stampa che permette di convertire, strato dopo strato, un file 3D in strutture di solida roccia. Solo schiacciando i tasti di un computer, grazie all’impiego della robotica applicata alla tecnologia CAD-CAE-CAM, si potrà assistere in diretta alla realizzazione del proprio progetto.

14 giorni
La CasaTuttaDiUnPezzo (2.40m x 4m x h 3.50m) è stata realizzata, in un'unica stampata, con questa tecnologia in circa 14 giorni lavorativi ed utilizzando 35 metri cubi di sabbia miscelata, di cui il 90% è stato recuperato per stampe successive.

D-shape

Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera.

Questa voce sull'argomento tecnologia è solo un abbozzo. Contribuisci a migliorarla secondo le convenzioni di Wikipedia.

Il D-shape è una tecnica di costruzione, ispirata alla stampa 3D[1], nella quale una mega stampante depone "pagine" di materiale granulare fino ad ottenere, strato dopo strato, la struttura finale. Il D-shape è stato brevettato dall'ingegnere pisano Enrico Dini nel 2007, e a lui lo dovremo se in futuro gli edifici si costruiranno con una stampante. Si prevede entro 5 anni che si potrebbe arrivare alle prime applicazioni residenziali.[2]

Note [modifica]

• ^ Da il Sole 24 ore
• ^ Focus n. 230 - Dicembre 2011

Wednesday, April 22. 2009 3D printing buildings: interview with Enrico Dini of D_Shape Comments 17    Enrico Dini dreamt of buildings, construction and impossible shapes. He was particularly inspired by Gaudi's architecture and loved his fantastic(in every sense) work. He became a Civil engineer and later branched out into making machines. All the while dreaming of those impossible shapes. Traditional building methods tend to reel in dreamers outlandish dreams though. Building with concrete and brick require scaffolding and a lot of manpower. This creates constraints. These constraints limit the way in which buildings can be constructed and limit the shapes and forms that architects can use. Rather than accept these constraints as a given Enrico set out to completely remove them. In 2004 he invented and patented a full scale 3D printing method that used epoxy to bind sand. Enrico could now 3D print buildings.  As Shapeways community members who have experimented with resin molds know, epoxy resin can stick to virtually anything. This lead to high maintenance costs for the machines as well as inefficiencies when they were used. Enrico went back to the drawing board to invent anew. In 2007 he got a new patent for a system using an inorganic binding material and any old sand to 3D print buildings. The new process had low maintenance costs and was easier to use. Now Enrico can 3D print buildings, cost effectively. He is now working on further improving the accuracy and will 3D print a full sized roundabout sculpture in Pisa Italy. The rendering below shows you the scale, once it has been installed. This is no pie in the sky stuff, it is happening now. The picture at the top of the post is of a quarter scale model of the actual 3D print of the roundabout. Affable Enrico told me that his "small team is sitting on a huge opportunity." I would tend to agree. Their D_shape technology makes it possible to 3D print 6 by 6 by 1m parts. These parts could either be shipped to the construction site or the entire building could be 3D printed on location. The parts made by D_shape resemble 'sandstone.' They are comparable in strength to reinforced concrete and the ingredients are the binding material and any type of sand. D_Shape's materials cost more than regular concrete but much less manpower is needed for construction. No scaffolding needs to be constructed so overall building cost should be lower than traditional building methods. The system works with a rigging that is suspended over the buildable part(you can see it at the top of the first image). The system deposits the sand and then the inorganic binding ink. No water is necessary. Because the two components meet outside the nozzle, the machine does not clog up and can keep up its accuracy of 25 DPI. Enrico and D_Shape are currently talking to lots of construction & engineering companies and architects about their technology. The technology would seem to be especially interesting for these architects. With D-Shape they could make previously impossible forms and indeed approach a building not as a place where planes intersect but much more organically. As with regular 3D printing methods a lot of forms can only be made in this way. I for one would love to work in a Moebius strip office building. One thing that I personally found very compelling about the technology is that it does not use cement. The production of cement creates a lot of CO2. The D-Shape process has the possibility to be much more environmentally friendly because the build material does not need to be made by heating limestone and so would create much less carbon dioxide. Since the build material is just sand plus the inorganic binder it could be much better for the planet too. What is next for D_Shape? One group of people that Enrico is talking to is the group responsible for the still ongoing construction of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Perhaps the engineer that was so inspired by Gaudi could help finish his work using 3D printing.    ShareThis Posted by Joris Peels in Community, Inspiration, Shapeways, What's Hot at 14:38

L’uomo che stampa le barriere coralline per il Medio Oriente

L’ingegner Enrico Dini è il padre della tecnologia D-shape Un mix di sabbia come inchiostro per costruire le rocce

• tecnologia dini stampante coralline

• +
• -

di Manolo Morandini

PONTEDERA. Dalle case alle barriere coralline. Forme sinuose e ardite per rendere palpabile il potenziale della tecnologia made in Pontedera. Il padre è l'ingegnere Enrico Dini che con la sua macchina a base di sabbia punta a rivoluzionare l'edilizia. La prossima commessa per la Dinitech Spa è la ricostruzione di trecento metri di barriera corallina in Medio Oriente. La trattativa, che è in fase avanzata, fa capo a una società di Ferrara la Tecnoreef Srl, specializzata in barriere artificiali su fondali marini e lacustri. «Non posso rivelare però chi è il committente – precisa l’ingegnere –. Si tratta di realizzare una struttura capace di unire in un’unica forma le possibilità di ripopolamento ittico e di dissipazione di energia».

La tecnologia si chiama D-shape ovvero forma Dini, con i diritti di sfruttamento di proprietà di una società londinese la Monolite Uk Ltd, mentre Dinitech Spa si occupa della commercializzazione in Italia. «I miei soci sono la Camera di commercio di Pisa e l'imprenditore Antonio Fedeli», spiega Dini che dell'azienda è l'amministratore delegato.

Sulla pagina di sabbia si stampa letteralmente l’oggetto, strato dopo strato, con un inchiostro che si solidifica. «Stampiamo la roccia e dalla sabbl travertino», dice Dini. L’ingegnere non nasconde che l’ambizione è quella di realizzare macchine imponenti. «Capaci di costruire un appartamento».

Si possono costruire blocchi come un immenso Lego o forme eclettiche per oggetti di arredamento. Un granello alla volta l’intuizione ha preso forma. E così anche le opportunità d’impiego e le relative sfide per rendere il prodotto stampato adatto per caratteristiche meccaniche e fisiche a quanto progettato. «Dal punto di vista statico i test ci dicono che la nostra roccia ha proprietà meccaniche superiori al calcestruzzo – sostiene –. Il limite è la risoluzione della stampa».

Quella delle barriere coralline è solo una delle opportunità. «Lo spunto ce lo ha dato una società australiana che ci ha richiesto dei campioni di barriera sulla base del disegno dell’architetto James Gardiner dello studio Faan. Li abbiamo stampati in dolomite e in granito».

Tra i progetti in pista in Sardegna c’è quello di stampare sassi abitabili a impatto zero. «Un progetto alternativo a quello della costruzione di una villa, che si è fermato per mancanza di soldi da parte del committente – spiega l’ingegner Dini –. Dovrebbe sorgere in prossimità di Cagliari e tra i partner ci sono anche la Regione Sardegna e l’associazione Lungimirante che fa capo al creativo Giovanni Floris».

Put your hammer up: D-Shape will print your next house

By Laura E. Mitchell on Mar 8, 2012 | 0 comments

Childhood summers spent crafting sand castles on the beaches of Tuscany near the emerald slopes of Monte Argentario have inspired the next wave of progress in building – one that uses local materials to construct organic, free-form structures that are low on visual impact but high on design.  The structures, which include plans for everything from replicas of coral reefs that function as fish sanctuaries to Italian-style villas, are easy on the eyes, but it’s not the plans themselves that are garnering all the attention — it is the way they are being produced. Thanks to new 3D printing capabilities, houses are printed from the ground up without ever hammering a single nail.

D-Shape, the Monolite UK brand that is pioneering the the system, takes the basic principles of 3D printing, a technology which has only been in existence since 2003 and has so far focused mostly on making small industrial models or, more recently, using desktop 3D printers like the Makerbot Thing-O-Matic to print 3D gadgets from the comfort of our homes, and uses it to free design from the limitations of modern construction techniques.

Honestly, it was about time someone did.

A D-Space printed form CREDIT: D-Space

Essentially we have beeg the same building methods since the Romans first discovered how to build domes. Modern man has improved the recipe for concrete and added steel bars to reinforce the structures, but still needs hand-built forms and cages to shape any concave or convex surfaces. And, as Enrico Dini, D-Shape creator, points out, “skilled personnel to continually refer to plans/blueprints,” which we all know, doesn’t come cheap.

But by using what is basically a jumbo analog of an inkjet 3D printer that spits out layer after layer of a sand-like material and a glue binder, Dini is able mimic the natural process of seafloor sedimentation – the same process that eventually creates sandstone – and save ¼ of the time and 30-50% of the cost needed to manually build a house while he’s at it. Twenty-four hours later, when the adhesive is dry, the extra sand, which was holding the structure in place, can be whisked away for use in future projects and the finished product can be seen in all its marble-like glory. And instead of the couple million years rocks usually need to form, you’ll have yours in just a few days or weeks, depending, of course, on how big the project is.

D-Shape, while not perfect, is a visionary leap towards the future of building. So far only small, single room houses and sculptures have been built and only in pieces, not the solid slab of stone Enrico Dini promises is possible.  But at a rate of 5 to 10 mm thickness per layer, D-Shape predicts that once they are fully operational they will be able to produce the equivalent of twelve two -story buildings annually.

Another concern is that the resolution of the finished structures isn’t that high, leaving them looking a little blurry — something Dini is certain could be resolved by adding more sand nozzles to the printer… and all he needs to do that is find a big financial backer.

But all possible iShape has a CAD file of the design you want and a printer large enough to make it happen, the process will work like any other factory churning out house after house. Cookie cutter? Yes. But at the same time original. According to Dini this is an opportunity to “print incredibly beautiful sculpture-houses.”

Laura can be reached at laura.eliza.mitchell(at)gmail.com

La casa in un pezzo unico: il progetto di Marco Ferreri

Pubblicato il 24 febbraio 2012 da Cristina

Nell’ambito dell’architettura e del design le novità non mancano mai e anche nel panorama italiano abbiamo menti brillanti che con le loro idee contribuiscono a mantenere costante il fermento. È questo il caso di Marco Ferreri.

Marco Ferreri durante la sua mostra personale al Triennale Design Museum ha presentato unprogetto di abitazione realizzata in un pezzo unico con l’ausilio di una nuova tecnologia. Il progetto è innovativo , il risultato originale e certamente ci sono margini per futuri e ancora sconosciuti sviluppi.

La casa in un pezzo unico di Marco Ferreri: i dettagli

La casa in un pezzo unico di Marco Ferrari è piccola, ma concreta, reale e tangibile. Il suo punto di partenza è un file 3d. Attraverso la tecnica D-shape Technology, infatti, ideata da Enrico Dini, è possibile trasformare un file 3D in architetture solide.

Così, un disegno è diventato una casa.
Utilizzando D-shape si è avuta un’unica stampata e partendo da questa in due settimane si è costruita la casa. Per farlo, sono stati utilizzati 35 metri cubi di unasabbia miscelata, il 90% della quale può essere utilizzata per altre stampe.

La casa, come si è detto, costituita da un blocco unico e non è stata arredata. Per quanto inizialmente fosse previsto l’arredamento, per varie motivazioni non è più stato collocato nell’abitazione, che è quindi visibile vuota.

La casa in un pezzo unico misura 2,40×4 metri ed è alta 3,50 metri: una sorta di mini appartamento in cemento, che per dimensioni, materiale e aspetto può quasi sembrare una piccola grotta, una sorta di rifugio dall’aria ancestrale, come fa notare lo stesso Marco Ferreri, affascinato dalla sua creazione.

Per ora si tratta soltanto di un prototipo, ma è auspicabile uno sviluppo futuro. È innegabile l’utilità che potrebbe avere una casa che può essere costruita in sole due settimane: basti pensare alle situazioni di emergenza, ai momenti in cui si vorrebbe avere la bacchetta magica per affrettare i tempi edisporre almeno di un rifugio di emergenza.

Certo che non si può negare che Marco Ferreri ha creato una casa tutta di un pezzo!

Ecco D-shape il plotter che stampa la pietra in 3D

di Giuseppe ChiellinoCronologia articolo17 luglio 2010

• Foto

• 
• 
• 
• 

Una villetta disegnata al computer e costruita in un blocco unico grazie ad un plotter che trasforma semplice sabbia in roccia naturale e dà forma a qualsiasi disegno tridimensionale. Non è una boutade estiva ma un brevetto, anzi due considerando anche il ‘legante' ecocompatibile che viene miscelato con la sabbia, registrato in Gran Bretagna da Enrico Dini, un ingegnere pisano che dopo anni di lavoro e di investimenti, vede ora concretizzarsi i suoi sforzi «per stampare oggetti di pietra» in una realtà imprenditoriale pronta a decollare.

È dei giorni scorsi, infatti, la firma di una lettera d'intenti con un gruppo di imprese di costruzione per costituire a settembre una newco che avrà l'esclusiva p commercializzare nel Mezzogiorno la tecnologia D-shape - "modellare" appunto - della Dinitech. «Il contratto prevede l'impegno della newco ad acquistare 30 plotter prodotte da Dinitech, in tre anni, e tutti i prodotti chimici che fanno parte della nuova tecnologia» spiega Lando Franchi, un commercialista del capoluogo toscano a cui l'ingegner Dini, una volta messa a punto la tecnologia, si è rivolto per trasformare l'idea in un'impresa, coinvolgendo nel capitale della Dinitech anche il gruppo Fedeli(specializzato nell'importazione e commercializzazione di prodotti chimici di base) e la Camera di Commercio di Pisa che ha il 20% del capitale della società costituita a novembre 2009 con un milione di capitale sociale.

«Il contratto con questo gruppo di imprenditori rappresenta la svolta che aspettavamo. A regime vale 30 milioni di fatturato, un milione a macchina. Se il sud ha queste potenzialità, mi aspetto che nel nord del paese la risposta possa essere ancora più forte» spiega Enrico Dini dall'Inghilterra dove spesso viene invitato a presentare la tecnologia D-shape e dove quattro anni fa ha costituito la Monolite Uk, «via internet e spendendo appena 168 sterline», titolare di tutti i brevetti. «Mi fa un po' rabbia – ammette l'ingegnere-inventore-imprenditore – aver dato i brevetti in mano agli inglesi, ai quali andranno i proventi fiscali indotti della commercializzazione di questa tecnologia che io ritengo rivoluzionaria. Ma in Italia ho trovato troppe difficoltà. Non esiste un modello di finanziamento in grado di valorizzare un'idea concepita da una sola persona, così come non esiste un soggetto, una commissione, uno strumento di valutazione che misuri il valore della persona che sta dietro all'idea». Così il paese non riesce a valorizzare gli inventori,quo;una categoria strana, trasversale, interdisciplinare, spesso costituita da "imperfetti competenti" che però non può contare, in Italia, su interlocutori in grado di valorizzarne le idee. Spesso è inevitabile, come nel mio caso, andare all'estero». Un sistema, secondo Dini, che «prima forma i cervelli e poi li esilia». C'è da dire, comunque, che la famiglia di Dini operava già nel settore meccanico, con la Dini Engineering che produce macchine per il settore calzaturiero e che oggi produce anche i plotter D-shape.

L’articolo continua sotto

I Più Letti

• Oggi
• Condivisi
• Video
• Foto
• Mese

• 1.  Anzianità, età, assegni, ...
• 2.  Al volante dell'auto che dimezza i ...
• 3.  Esclusivo / Riforma del lavoro, ecco il ...
• 4.  Sussidi, riforma più graduale - ...
• 5.  Fornero: accordo sul lavoro la prossima ...
• 6.  Paesi in recessione ma Borse in rally. ...
• 7.  Il direttore degli Uffizi: «Il mio ...
• 8.  Goldman Sachs, dirigente lascia e ...
• 9.  BTp Italia, Grilli presenta il nuovo ...
• 10.  Inter, la rivoluzione comincia il giorno ...

Selezionati per te

• Lei: così ho riportato la Rai in utile nel 2011

• Correlati
• Foto
• Ultimi di Sezione

D-shape il plotter che stampa la pietra in 3D

Enrico Dini, ingegnere-inventore-imprenditore pisano, ha brevettato una tecnologia che può trovare

Tags Correlati: Camera di Commercio | Dini Engineering | Dinitech | Enrico Dini | Fedeli | Gran Bretagna | Italia | Lando Franchi | Monolite Uk | Tutela ambientale

 

Come funziona la tecnologia D-shape 
La "stampa tridimensionale" della roccia sviluppata da Dini si basa sull'uso del plotter, la stampante a tre dimensioni. Anzichè stampare su fogli di carta, D-shape stampa "fogli" di sabbia da 5 millimetri di spessore, miscelati ad un collante ecologico (a base di sali) brevettato con il gruppo Fedeli. Sovrapposti uno all'altro dal plotter stesso, i fogli di sabbia si trasformano in roccia, diventando un oggetto unico. «Ciò consente di realizzare forme impossibili da realizzare con altre tecnologie» sostiene Dini, mostrando le foto della prima realizzazione, una sorta di struttura ossea, prodotta su commissione di uno studio di architettura londinese. Tra i primi test, anche una riproduzione in scala del tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio del Bramante, a Roma. «Per ora - spiega ancora l'ingegnere - le macchine che abbiamo possono costruire oggetti larghi massimo sei metri ma lunghi quanto si vuole perchè si muovono su un carrello. In teoria, basta realizzare un plotter più grande per poter produrre anche case di dimensioni superiori alla semplice villetta».

Le possibili applicazioni 
Dopo anni di dubbi e difficoltà, oggi l'ingegnere pisano guarda al futuro con molto ottimismo. E mentre tratta in Sardegna un accordo simile a quello realizzato con gli imprenditori pugliesi, per costruire villette a basso impatto ambientale, mimetizzate tra le rocce dell'isola, Dini pensa ai possibili sviluppi del prodotto. «Nella mia mente - spiega - vedo da qui a pochissimi anni un gruppo internazionale articolato in una decina di business unit specializzate per categorie di prodotto: interior design, exterior design e arredo urbano, cladding (rivestimenti esterni) in forma libera o ventilata, settore navale, difesa (opere militari difensive), grandi costruzioni, social housing ma anche urbanistica». Insomma, Dini guarda lontano, come è giusto che faccia un inventore. Come è giusto che faccia un imprenditore. E pensare che meno di tre anni fa stava per vendere tutto a una banca italiana e l'operazione saltò per colpa del credit crunch...

D-Shape: Gebäude aus dem 3D-DruckerHausbau soll zukünftig in einer Woche möglich sein

Radiolaria: Skulptur aus dem Drucker von D-Shape (Foto: D-Shape)

London/Bergamo (pte026/22.02.2012/12:15) - Gebäude der Zukunft könnten aus dem 3D-Drucker kommen. Daran arbeitet das britische Unternehmen D-Shapehttp://d-shape.com , das bereits eine Skultpur auf Basis der eigenen Technoligie realisiert hat. Im Gegensatz zum üblichen Druckprozess, wie er etwa im Rapid Prototyping einsetzt wird, bestehen die schichtweise erstellten Bauteile nicht aus Plastik, sondern aus Sand, der mit Bindemittel gefestigt wird. "Der Weg zu gedruckten Gebäuden ist nur noch eine Frage des Geldes", erklärt der D-Shape-Vorsitzende Enrico Dini im Gespräch mit pressetext.

Herausforderung Material

Der Drucker von D-Shape kann aktuell Bauteile in einer Größe von etwa 6 x 6 x 1 Meter herstellen. Dabei arbeitet sich das Gerät Schicht für Schicht vor. "Pro Zentimeter brauchen wir acht bis 15 Minuten", sagt Dini. "Wir schaffen also bis zu 320 Zentimeter pro Tag." Die Mixtur aus Sand und epoxidfreiem Binder ergibt letztlich ein Material, das in Form und Oberfläche Ähnlichkeiten zu Sandstein aufweist. Als Testprojekte hat das Unternehmen bereits eine mehrere Meter hohe Skulptur errichtet. Im Gegensatz zu konventioneller Bautechnik erlaubt das Druckverfahren die schnelle Realisierung komplizierter Formen.

Der Produktion kompletter Gebäude, die sich zum Wohnen und Arbeiten eignen, ist allerdings noch Zukunftsmusik. "Die Herstellung in Schichten stellt neue Herausforderungen an das Material", so der D-Shape-Chef. "Im Gegensatz zu Beton wird die Substanz nicht gemischt. Zur Bearbeitung mit einem 3D-Drucker ist zudem eine gewisse Porösität Voraussetzung, deswegen ist nach dem Druckprozess eine Nachbehandlung notwendig, um Stabilität zu gewährleisten."

Druckbauteile bereits im Einsatz

Die Firma liefert jedoch bereits Bauteile aus, die Teil herkömmlicher Baustrukturen werden. Als nächsten Schritt möchte man weitere Produkte und die Technologie weitervermarkten. Strukturkomponenten aus dem 3D-Drucker sollen laut Dini etwa im Bereich der Landschaftsarchitektur oder der Küstenrestauration eingesetzt werden, etwa als künstliche Riffe. Auch Pavillons oder Kopien archäologischer Ausgrabungen lassen sich erstellen.

Nun arbeitet man bei D-Shape an einem besseren Drucker mit höherer Auflösung und sucht nach geeigneteren und günstigeren Bindemitteln, um den Herstellungsprozess in Zukunft schneller und billiger umsetzen zu können. Der Schlüssel, so der Unternehmer, liegt in der Industrialisierung. Bislang sind rund 2,5 Mio. Euro in die Technologie geflossen. Mit dem entsprechenden Kapital, meint Dini, wäre man bereits heute schon am Ziel.

Haus in einer Woche

Die Vision lautet, bewohnbare Strukturen vollständig im Druckverfahren fertigen zu lassen. Dies bedarf jedoch nicht nur Fortschritte im Bereich des Materials, sondern auch ausgedehnter Experimente und Simulationen zur Optimierung der Fertigung. Auch die Logistik und Organisation muss auf Projekte in größerem Umfang abgestimmt werden. Letztlich soll es möglich sein, ein komplettes Haus dank 3D-Druck innerhalb einer Woche errichten zu können.

(Ende)

Aussender: pressetext.redaktion Ansprechpartner: Georg Pichler Tel.: +43-1-81140-303 E-Mail: pichler@pressetext.at Website: www.pressetext.com

Enrico Dini and his architectural sand fab

• By Bruce Sterling 
• Email Author 
• March 14, 2010 |  
• 7:35 pm |  
•  | Edit

*I really hope this guy can make it happen, because ultra-cheap and ultra-elegant fabbed Italian buildings made of sand and resin ought to cover the earth.

Click to watch on YouTube

23 Jun 09

Radiolaria Pavilion: A Free-Form Structure Produced Using The World’s Largest 3D Printer

Radiolaria represents a micro-architecture experiment developed by Andrea Morgante of Shiro Studio in association with d-Shape. In 2008 d-Shape successfully developed the very first 3D mega printer that allows seamless and free-form construction of monolithic structures on a large scale.

The Radiolaria pavilion aimed to define a complex, self-suppting structure that could demonstrate and test this pioneering construction technique. Measuring 3×3×3 meters, the structure represents a scale model of the final pavilion, due to be built in 2010; this pavilion will be 10 meters high and will be built in Pontedera, Italy.

‘The 21st century revolution in building technology has a name. d_shape (formerly Monolite). The mega scale free-form printer of buildings. What couldn’t be done, now can be done.’

Introduction:

Since the 19th century, the construction industry has been using Portland cement to cast concrete into a formwork containing a steel cage, cementing bricks and stones using masonry.
Despite the availability of construction machinery such as cranes, pumps, concrete mixers, moulds and form works, the building industry is currently reliant on the manual intervention of professional builders who are the hands which operate the machinery.
Today’s construction technology lags behind the available computer design technology. The new 3D CAD software allows architects to conceive and design a construction easily but existing building methods prevent the full potential of the new design software from being achieved. Existing materials such as reinforced concrete and masonry are expensive and inflexible. To build a complex concave-convex surface, for example, would require the pre-fabrication of expensive formworks and cages, the mounting of complicated scaffolding and then the manual casting.
Furthermore, existing techniques require skilled personnel to continually refer to plans/blue-prints which is very expensive.
Stereolithography, also known as 3-D layering or 3D printing, allows the creation of three-dimensional (3-D) objects from CAD drawings. It is already used to manufacture small objects.
These scaled models of a building were created by a Z-Corp 3D printing machine operated using this method. To achieve this buila full scale will only require a machine of adequate size and the right binder.
Introducing d_shape, Dini has opened the way for application of this process on a large scale.
With d_shape, we will enable architects to make the buildings they design using a robotic building machine that uses CAD-CAE-CAM design technology. This will allow a level of precision and freedom of design unheard of in the past and the human limitations of master builders and bricklayers will no longer hamper architects’ visions.

What is d_shape?

d_shape is a new robotic building system using new materials to create superior stone-like structures.

This new machinery enables full-size sandstone buildings to be made without human intervention, using a stereolithography 3-D printing process that requires only sand and our special inorganic binder to operate. d_shape is a new building technology which will revolutionize the way architectural design is planned, and building constructions are executed. By simply pressing the “enter” key on the keypad we intend to give the architect the possibility to make buildings directly, without intermediaries who can add interpretation and realization mistakes.

Today’s Construction technology lags behind the available Computer Design Technology. The new 3D CAD software allow architects to conceive and design constructions easily, but existing building methods do not allow the full potential of the new design software to be achieved.

Despite the availability of construction machinery such as cranes, pumps, concrete mixers, moulds and form works, the building industry is currently reliant on the manual interventions of professional builders who are the hands which operate the machinery.

Existing materials such as reinforced concrete and masonry is expensive and inflexible. To build a complex concave-convex surface, for example, would require the pre-fabrication of expensive formworks an the mounting of complicate scaffolding and then the manual casting. Furthermore, existing techniques require skilled personnel to continually refer to plans/blue-prints. This is very expensive.

The Industry needs to resolve this problem and we believe that d_shape is the innovative solution. d_shape enable architects to directly make the buildings they design, using a robotic building machine that uses CAD-CAE-CAM Design Technology.

This technology allows a level of precision and freedom of design unheard of in the past. The human limitations of master builders and bricklayers will no longer hamper architects’ visions. d_shape competes with the traditional construction industry which uses cement, reinforced concrete, bricks and stones.

d_shape has been designed to make the Construction Industry more environmentally friendly as well as providing low-cost access to building for people in need around the world. The system uses environmentally friendly materials and very low levels of energy.

The technology:

The d_shape building process is similar to the ‘printing’ process because the system operates by straining a binder on a sand layer (more on materials in the next section). This is similar to what an ink-jet printer does on a sheet of paper. This principle allows the architect to design fantastically complex architectural structures.

Product overview

Seen from the outside, d_shape appears like a big aluminium structure inside of which the building will be constructed. CAD-CAM software drives the machinery during the building process. This structure holds the printer head, which of course is the real core of the new technology. Despite its large size, the structure is a very light and it can be easily transported, assembled and dismantled in a few hours by two workmen.

The process beith the architect designing his project using CAD 3D Computer technology. The Computer design obtained is downloaded into a STL file and is imported into the Computer program that controls d_shape’s printer head. The process takes place in a non-stop work session, starting from the foundation level and ending on the top of the roof, including stairs, external and internal partition walls, concave and convex surfaces, bas-reliefs, columns, statues, wiring, cabling and piping cavities. During the printing of each section a ‘structural ink’ is deposited by the printer’s nozzles on the sand. The solidification process takes 24 hours to complete. The printing starts from the bottom of the construction and rises up in sections of 5-10mm. Upon contact the solidification process starts and a new layer is added.

Surplus sand that has not been embedded within the structure acts as a buttressing support while the solidification process takes place. This surplus sand then can be reused on future buildings.

The new material

The new material has been submitted to traction, compression and bending tests. The results have been extraordinary! The artificial sandstone created has excellent resistance properties.

Effectively, the new process returns any type of sand, dust or gravel back to its original Compact Stone state. The Stone is very similar to Marble.

The binder transforms any kind of sand into a marble-like material (i.e. a mineral with microcrystalline characteristics) and with a resistance and traction much superior to Portland Cement, so much so that there is no need to use iron to reinforce the structure. This artificial marble is indistinguishable from real marble and chemically it is one hundred percent environmentally friendly.

Advantages of d_shape technology Vs traditional methods

d_shape offers absolute advantages in terms of:

Quality: d_shape allows more advanced design and construction. The ailding will correspond to the CAD design to within planned tolerances of 5-10 millimeters. The type and complexity of the architectural styles (be it rationalist, neo-classical, organic, etc.) will not impact on building cost. In fact, as the system does not require moulds for concrete casting, any feature conceived by the designer can be easily printed.

Quantity/Time: The system is estimated to be four times faster than traditional building methods. Furthermore, the required operating time is known in advance allowing accurate planning for the machinery and for resources. The annual production capacity of the first (smaller) model of d_shape will be of 2500 m², which is equivalent to twelve two floor buildings.

Costs: despite the higher cost of the binder compared to Portland cement, the realization costs of d_shape structures are 30%-50% lower than manual methods.

Safety: no human intervention means substantially reduced risk of accidents. The building industry is affected by a higher incidence of injures and mortal accidents than many other industries. Severe and expensive safety measures must be constantly applied on the yard during building construction. d_shape would lower the costs in terms of both human lives and financially.

Uses:

d_shape can print any feature that can be enveloped into a cube 6×6 meters side. The applications by Monolite are endless.

1. Public/Urban.
Bus stops; park benches/seats; kiosks; colored marble effect pavements; fountains.

2. Private.
Gazebos; swimming pool furnishings (dummy rocks, fountains, small bridges,
chairs, pavements); artistic staircases; fountains; flower boxes; home stone furnishing: basins, kitchens, sofas, tables.

3. Playgrounds and kindergarten.
Fantasy buildings, tunnels, caves, mountains.

4. Religious.
Temples, bell towers, altars, statues, arches, columns.

5. Natural Parks / Zoo – Recrtional.
Nearly zero environment impact architecture, bungalows, aquariums, caves.

6. Studios/Artistic.
Reproduction of buildings, fantasy/futurist shapes, caves for movies.
Any artistic feature: horses, heads, etc.

7. Archaeology.
Missing parts of columns, etc.

8. Large scale rapid prototyping.
Half scale or 1/4 scale models of buildings, copies of any existing building; cave spheres, ellipsoids, pyramids.

9. Civil engineering / Complex industrial plant parts.
Bridge portions, road portions, tube sections, pillars portions, stone floating, harbor sections, marina furnishing, variable section beams and columns, Water depuration, insulation plates

10. Stone machines.
Stone doors, stone bearings, articulated stone structures.

11. Cemeteries.

d_shape appeals to two different kind of costumers:

Building industry:

- Building contractors to make one to two floor buildings.
- Architectural Firms that need to make scaled models of buildings.
- All generic sandstone product manufacturers.
- Building equipment suppliers.

Media and Arts industry:

- Studios that make dummy rocks for aquariums, swimming pools and wellness centers.
- Fantasy structures for recreational/adventure/ parks and the sandstone sculptors.
- Museums and Foundations that need to replicate monuments and temples.

For further information visit: www.d-shape.com.