Is there anything 3D printing can't do? It can replicate everything from houses to guns. It can conjure human organs to satellites. There are even robots that plot material like spiders crawling across a window sill. These applications typically use a plastic or ceramic composite to make their objects, which range from the size of a figurine to the size of a building. But what about 3D printing on a different scale? Like at the material scale? Architizer got a firsthand view of this more mysterious side of 3D printing at the Consentino factory in Almeria, Spain. The surface manufacturer has developed a new ultra-compact material called Dekton, and we got to tour the state-of-the-arts facility where it is produced. Dekton is a sophisticated mixture of raw materials that are used to manufacture glass, porcelain, and quartz, and it can be used for interior and exterior surfaces. The hyper-customizable material utilizes 3D printing at the particle scale along with tried-and-true techniques borrowed from ceramics, stone, and glass production and took five years to develop. Image via designmagnifique.wordpress.com The process includes 16 steps, where Advanced TSP (Technology of Sintered ...
Is there anything 3D printing can't do? It can replicate everything from houses to guns. It can conjure human organs to satellites. There are even robots that plot material like spiders crawling across a window sill. These applications typically use a plastic or ceramic composite to make their objects, which range from the size of a figurine to the size of a building. But what about 3D printing on a different scale? Like at the material scale? Architizer got a firsthand view of this more mysterious side of 3D printing at the Consentino factory in Almeria, Spain. The surface manufacturer has developed a new ultra-compact material called Dekton, and we got to tour the state-of-the-arts facility where it is produced. Dekton is a sophisticated mixture of raw materials that are used to manufacture glass, porcelain, and quartz, and it can be used for interior and exterior surfaces. The hyper-customizable material utilizes 3D printing at the particle scale along with tried-and-true techniques borrowed from ceramics, stone, and glass production and took five years to develop. Image via designmagnifique.wordpress.com The process includes 16 steps, where Advanced TSP (Technology of Sintered ...