6 ms·

We can 3D print wood now

86 points by e-brake 5y ago

Pfhreak 5y ago
When I see epoxy I start to get suspicious about whether this product/process is as sustainable as claimed. Can I throw the whole thing in a compost bin? Or is this just a fancier plastic that will inevitably end up in our oceans?
- BariumBlue 5y ago
  I thought something similar when I found out that the "transparent wood breakthroughs" are, as far as I can tell, all epoxy based.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  They say the end product biodegrades. Even if the epoxy part wouldn't, that would be the least fraction in terms of mass and would be a win over just plastic.
  - FranOntanaya 5y ago
    Not if it replaces wood products that fully biodegrade (even tho many are chemically treated in other ways). That'd be a net loss, and I could see it being huge in terms of additional mass of plastics being added to the environment.
  - Pfhreak 5y ago
    Biodegrades is too fuzzy. What's the time horizon for that? What conditions are needed?
  - alex_duf 5y ago
    Unfortunately biodegradable isn't the same as compostable. Plastic can be biodegradable, and will/can biodegradable into microplastics, with all the issues microplastics are known for. So I always take it with a pinch of salt when a brand toots the "biodegradable" horn a bit too loudly, come back when it's compostable.
- carapace 5y ago
  Some sort of mucilage-based glue would be cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucilage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucilage It seems there's a tension between being biodegradable and being durable.
rich_sasha 5y ago
Pictures look stunning. I wonder how durable etc it is. Really, does it have the properties of wood or the epoxy resin.
- almog 5y ago
  Lacking grain, it probably only has the texture and general color of wood, but not the properties provided by the wood grain, nor its aesthetics.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  It probably feels like plastics. Look at forust.com. You can see bigger res pictures there and the wood look "sandy". Edit: https://www.forust.com/store https://www.forust.com/store
  - DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
    It feels like wood but like a fresh sanded piece without any post processing.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      Did you touch it yourself? Can you like sand it without pieces coming off? Their samples that are not the vases seems better.
      - DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
        Yeah, you can sand it, depends a lot on your nozzle size and if your printing fully infilled or with thicker fringe. If you are printing with full infill you can basically do whatever you do on normal wood/press board.
- sen 5y ago
  I assume it would be similar to MDF wouldn't it? It's wood dust/fibres mixed in a glue.
misnome 5y ago
Hasn’t there been wood-based filament for many years already? Given that this just reads as a press release, it doesn’t says what’s new or original about their method.
- Buxato 5y ago
  Yes
- sen 5y ago
  It's mostly marketing for their printer which uses a different method to SLA filament-based printers. These are huge commercial sized machines, on par with HAAS CNCs etc, so this is aimed at an entirely different market to hobbyists using wood filament.
  - wincy 5y ago
    Minor point of clarification, SLA, or stereolithography, is resin printing. I use it to make super high detail D&D minis. It uses liquid UV sensitive resin and some way of masking the resin to print (like an LCD screen). The printer type that uses filament, and that most people associate with a “regular” 3D printer is of type FDM, or fused deposition modeling. FDM printers can use the wood filament, although it’s kind of a pain from what I’ve heard because the wood can wear down the extrusion nozzle.
    - vangelis 5y ago
      What is your SLA setup like? I don't have a good workspace so I've been printing outside in a cardboard box (to avoid the deadly rays), and thinking about building a proper fume extractor to run in an extra bedroom.
      - wincy 5y ago
        I keep the SLA printer, my Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K, on a table in an unused room at the back of the house. I keep it out of direct sunlight from the window, as I ruined a print when the sun shone in, which wasn’t a problem until winter ended. Our house is pretty big but even still if I leave the door open my wife will complain about the smell. I also run a space heater in that room at the 85F setting, which I’ve found helps keep the prints more consistent. The viscosity of the resin is reduced by the higher temperature. I’ve been having a hard time finding good, affordable resin, i tried Matterhackers resin which was a disaster, I could never dial in the settings. Yousu resin worked really well and it’s $26 per liter with free shipping, but my second order I placed a month ago still hasn’t even shipped. Elegoo is consistently good but I end up paying $13 more per liter with tax which is frustrating. Both 3D printers are running pretty much 24/7 to crank out Dungeons and Dragons miniatures and terrain for the game I’m running. I quit video games last year and found a new, more tangible obsession. I’m really excited about Apple coming out with really amazing AR glasses in the next few years that will revolutionize tabletop gaming.
isoprophlex 5y ago
Today in "GPT-3 ramblings or marketing spiel": > "We are honoring the cellulose and lignin of the trees by rearticulating them into assets for present and future generations. By allowing millions of trees to remain in place in their forests, Forust is launching a highly evolved technology for the circular technosphere.” hmmkay hmmkay, so you're making money off wood waste, that's cool...
- xoa 5y ago
  FWIW, I've met McDonough, and a friend did a bunch of work with him. He's an interesting person and has done some genuinely interesting projects. And not in terms of big fancy ultra expensive ones, he's been on the "sustainability" theme for a very long time, it's genuine. But he's always spoke like that, no doubt reinforced by trying to speak in ways that would convince movers and shakers to give a shit. Bunch of us got a huge laugh when we saw this, someone thought "gee that looks like something he'd be interested in" then lo and behold, there it was, and same flowery funny language as always. Anyway, just a random anecdote that that kind of language long predated GPT-3. It learned from somewhere :).
- sas41 5y ago
  It really is cool, but what I don't understand is why do we need all this techno-babble-esque wording around the idea of "3D printed wood", just call it that. I see way too many simple but cool concepts bogged down by an epic written collectively by the marketing dept. muddying the true concept of things. We re-use wood-waste to 3D print objects. So simple, to the point and just as cool.
  - torgian 5y ago
    Investors, plain and simple. Many investors don’t know tech, or have a limited knowledge about it, so pitching things in terms and phrases that impress them works.
    - refactor_master 5y ago
      Really? I’d have thought investors were busy people, asking questions like “so what does it actually do”? Like, for example, my management rarely cares about the brilliance of my code. They want to know what it accomplishes —- before they’re off to a different meeting.
Buxato 5y ago
Bio-epoxy my b**. We should stop using difficult or impossible to recycle materials, just for minor convenience or arguably aesthetic improvements, only when its the best option for something meaningful. I like binder jetting production method and the possibilities it will bring to us but, as happens with other production methods, we should use it with responsibility. Many of the examples show should be do it with normal wood.
skymer 5y ago
Wooden crafts (turned bowls, cutting boards, small sculptures, etc.) typically rely for their uniqueness on features of natural woods that this 3D printing method can't replicate. That includes unusual grains and burls, live edge, and gluing up multiple species. From the few examples in their store, it looks like their main esthetic tool is lots of piercing. I wonder if their minimum hole size is small enough to improve on hand-held sandalwood fans?
- thomasahle 5y ago
  The wood propellas seem to have natural wood features. Are they just painted on to it?
  - DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
    A change of extruding temperature changes the color of the wooden filament and produces features like natural wood would have.
    - bayesian_horse 5y ago
      It's binder jet technology, so they are using some different way to vary the color or density.
      - DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
        They use a RAM 336 for printing it seems that the color modulation takes place in the curing process so heat is involved. In my experience there is no way to switch between different sands in process.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    I had the same thought. The answer is actually in the text, took a while to find it: "Forust’s 3D printed parts support a wide variety of wood grains at launch, including rosewood, ash, zebrano, ebony, and mahogany. The parts also support a range of wood stains such as natural, oak, ash, and walnut." Yeah it seems it's just painted. So now you can't even trust wood anymore. Very tacky.
DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
We 3D printed wood in 2012. There are lots of filaments available this is just a fluff piece.
- Pfhreak 5y ago
  Can you point me to filaments that are produced from wood and contain no petroleum and are heat sensitive sufficient to be able to print wood grain coloration?
- opencl 5y ago
  This article is not about wood composite filaments for FDM machines, they're putting sawdust in binder jetting machines. There's at least some level of novelty here.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  The end product of this process here has a much higher wood-content per mass than those printed with wood-based filaments on FDM printers.
  - DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
    You are totally right but the headline is misleading.
stephenr 5y ago
I mean. I'm no woodworker. I make some shed-type stuff out of timber. But how is this not just MDF in a different shape?
- Grustaf 5y ago
  That's what it is, but since the shape can be anything, it does open up new possibilities. Must be amazingly expensive compared to mdf though.
mdorazio 5y ago
This is effectively printing MDF, which is very different from what most people consider "wood". The novelty is in using binders with fusion jet printing instead of pre-bound FDM filament as has been available for some time. It's an interesting alternative to traditional powders used with fusion jet printing. Personally, I'd much rather CNC real wood to maintain the fiber structure of something like a propeller, but this is nice for aesthetic pieces.
m3kw9 5y ago
Print a gold bar shaped wood with imprints 9999, is worth more than gold now.
avaldes 5y ago
It looks like MDF with extra steps. Also, eco-friendly like "PLA is biodegradable" (which is technically true but practically false)? With epoxy? I don't think so.

86 points by e-brake 5y ago

When I see epoxy I start to get suspicious about whether this product/process is as sustainable as claimed. Can I throw the whole thing in a compost bin? Or is this just a fancier plastic that will inevitably end up in our oceans?

BariumBlue 5y ago
I thought something similar when I found out that the "transparent wood breakthroughs" are, as far as I can tell, all epoxy based.
bayesian_horse 5y ago
They say the end product biodegrades. Even if the epoxy part wouldn't, that would be the least fraction in terms of mass and would be a win over just plastic.
- FranOntanaya 5y ago
  Not if it replaces wood products that fully biodegrade (even tho many are chemically treated in other ways). That'd be a net loss, and I could see it being huge in terms of additional mass of plastics being added to the environment.
- Pfhreak 5y ago
  Biodegrades is too fuzzy. What's the time horizon for that? What conditions are needed?
- alex_duf 5y ago
  Unfortunately biodegradable isn't the same as compostable. Plastic can be biodegradable, and will/can biodegradable into microplastics, with all the issues microplastics are known for. So I always take it with a pinch of salt when a brand toots the "biodegradable" horn a bit too loudly, come back when it's compostable.
carapace 5y ago
Some sort of mucilage-based glue would be cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucilage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucilage It seems there's a tension between being biodegradable and being durable.

rich_sasha 5y ago

Pictures look stunning. I wonder how durable etc it is. Really, does it have the properties of wood or the epoxy resin.

almog 5y ago
Lacking grain, it probably only has the texture and general color of wood, but not the properties provided by the wood grain, nor its aesthetics.
rightbyte 5y ago
It probably feels like plastics. Look at forust.com. You can see bigger res pictures there and the wood look "sandy". Edit: https://www.forust.com/store https://www.forust.com/store
- DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
  It feels like wood but like a fresh sanded piece without any post processing.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Did you touch it yourself? Can you like sand it without pieces coming off? Their samples that are not the vases seems better.
    - DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
      Yeah, you can sand it, depends a lot on your nozzle size and if your printing fully infilled or with thicker fringe. If you are printing with full infill you can basically do whatever you do on normal wood/press board.
sen 5y ago
I assume it would be similar to MDF wouldn't it? It's wood dust/fibres mixed in a glue.

misnome 5y ago

Hasn’t there been wood-based filament for many years already? Given that this just reads as a press release, it doesn’t says what’s new or original about their method.

Buxato 5y ago
Yes
sen 5y ago
It's mostly marketing for their printer which uses a different method to SLA filament-based printers. These are huge commercial sized machines, on par with HAAS CNCs etc, so this is aimed at an entirely different market to hobbyists using wood filament.
- wincy 5y ago
  Minor point of clarification, SLA, or stereolithography, is resin printing. I use it to make super high detail D&D minis. It uses liquid UV sensitive resin and some way of masking the resin to print (like an LCD screen). The printer type that uses filament, and that most people associate with a “regular” 3D printer is of type FDM, or fused deposition modeling. FDM printers can use the wood filament, although it’s kind of a pain from what I’ve heard because the wood can wear down the extrusion nozzle.
  - vangelis 5y ago
    What is your SLA setup like? I don't have a good workspace so I've been printing outside in a cardboard box (to avoid the deadly rays), and thinking about building a proper fume extractor to run in an extra bedroom.
    - wincy 5y ago
      I keep the SLA printer, my Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K, on a table in an unused room at the back of the house. I keep it out of direct sunlight from the window, as I ruined a print when the sun shone in, which wasn’t a problem until winter ended. Our house is pretty big but even still if I leave the door open my wife will complain about the smell. I also run a space heater in that room at the 85F setting, which I’ve found helps keep the prints more consistent. The viscosity of the resin is reduced by the higher temperature. I’ve been having a hard time finding good, affordable resin, i tried Matterhackers resin which was a disaster, I could never dial in the settings. Yousu resin worked really well and it’s $26 per liter with free shipping, but my second order I placed a month ago still hasn’t even shipped. Elegoo is consistently good but I end up paying $13 more per liter with tax which is frustrating. Both 3D printers are running pretty much 24/7 to crank out Dungeons and Dragons miniatures and terrain for the game I’m running. I quit video games last year and found a new, more tangible obsession. I’m really excited about Apple coming out with really amazing AR glasses in the next few years that will revolutionize tabletop gaming.

isoprophlex 5y ago

Today in "GPT-3 ramblings or marketing spiel": > "We are honoring the cellulose and lignin of the trees by rearticulating them into assets for present and future generations. By allowing millions of trees to remain in place in their forests, Forust is launching a highly evolved technology for the circular technosphere.” hmmkay hmmkay, so you're making money off wood waste, that's cool...

xoa 5y ago
FWIW, I've met McDonough, and a friend did a bunch of work with him. He's an interesting person and has done some genuinely interesting projects. And not in terms of big fancy ultra expensive ones, he's been on the "sustainability" theme for a very long time, it's genuine. But he's always spoke like that, no doubt reinforced by trying to speak in ways that would convince movers and shakers to give a shit. Bunch of us got a huge laugh when we saw this, someone thought "gee that looks like something he'd be interested in" then lo and behold, there it was, and same flowery funny language as always. Anyway, just a random anecdote that that kind of language long predated GPT-3. It learned from somewhere :).
sas41 5y ago
It really is cool, but what I don't understand is why do we need all this techno-babble-esque wording around the idea of "3D printed wood", just call it that. I see way too many simple but cool concepts bogged down by an epic written collectively by the marketing dept. muddying the true concept of things. We re-use wood-waste to 3D print objects. So simple, to the point and just as cool.
- torgian 5y ago
  Investors, plain and simple. Many investors don’t know tech, or have a limited knowledge about it, so pitching things in terms and phrases that impress them works.
  - refactor_master 5y ago
    Really? I’d have thought investors were busy people, asking questions like “so what does it actually do”? Like, for example, my management rarely cares about the brilliance of my code. They want to know what it accomplishes —- before they’re off to a different meeting.

Buxato 5y ago

Bio-epoxy my b**. We should stop using difficult or impossible to recycle materials, just for minor convenience or arguably aesthetic improvements, only when its the best option for something meaningful. I like binder jetting production method and the possibilities it will bring to us but, as happens with other production methods, we should use it with responsibility. Many of the examples show should be do it with normal wood.

skymer 5y ago

Wooden crafts (turned bowls, cutting boards, small sculptures, etc.) typically rely for their uniqueness on features of natural woods that this 3D printing method can't replicate. That includes unusual grains and burls, live edge, and gluing up multiple species. From the few examples in their store, it looks like their main esthetic tool is lots of piercing. I wonder if their minimum hole size is small enough to improve on hand-held sandalwood fans?

thomasahle 5y ago
The wood propellas seem to have natural wood features. Are they just painted on to it?
- DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
  A change of extruding temperature changes the color of the wooden filament and produces features like natural wood would have.
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    It's binder jet technology, so they are using some different way to vary the color or density.
    - DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
      They use a RAM 336 for printing it seems that the color modulation takes place in the curing process so heat is involved. In my experience there is no way to switch between different sands in process.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  I had the same thought. The answer is actually in the text, took a while to find it: "Forust’s 3D printed parts support a wide variety of wood grains at launch, including rosewood, ash, zebrano, ebony, and mahogany. The parts also support a range of wood stains such as natural, oak, ash, and walnut." Yeah it seems it's just painted. So now you can't even trust wood anymore. Very tacky.

DeliriumTrigger 5y ago

We 3D printed wood in 2012. There are lots of filaments available this is just a fluff piece.

Pfhreak 5y ago
Can you point me to filaments that are produced from wood and contain no petroleum and are heat sensitive sufficient to be able to print wood grain coloration?
opencl 5y ago
This article is not about wood composite filaments for FDM machines, they're putting sawdust in binder jetting machines. There's at least some level of novelty here.
bayesian_horse 5y ago
The end product of this process here has a much higher wood-content per mass than those printed with wood-based filaments on FDM printers.
- DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
  You are totally right but the headline is misleading.

stephenr 5y ago

I mean. I'm no woodworker. I make some shed-type stuff out of timber. But how is this not just MDF in a different shape?

Grustaf 5y ago
That's what it is, but since the shape can be anything, it does open up new possibilities. Must be amazingly expensive compared to mdf though.

mdorazio 5y ago

This is effectively printing MDF, which is very different from what most people consider "wood". The novelty is in using binders with fusion jet printing instead of pre-bound FDM filament as has been available for some time. It's an interesting alternative to traditional powders used with fusion jet printing. Personally, I'd much rather CNC real wood to maintain the fiber structure of something like a propeller, but this is nice for aesthetic pieces.

m3kw9 5y ago

Print a gold bar shaped wood with imprints 9999, is worth more than gold now.

avaldes 5y ago

It looks like MDF with extra steps. Also, eco-friendly like "PLA is biodegradable" (which is technically true but practically false)? With epoxy? I don't think so.