Enrico Dini is a man on a mission to change the way buildings are created. His firm, Monolite UK, is developing a means of depositing structures using stereolithography 3-D printing and an artificial sandstone material made of a special mixture of sand and binding agents. The company plans to sell the printing technology, under the brand D-Shape.
The Man Who Prints Houses Trailer from Marc Webb on Vimeo.
So far, it hasn’t been a cake walk. That’s evident in the trailer for an upcoming film about this Italian inventor and robotics expert’s life and career. His family life and financial health suffer as he chases his vision to revolutionize the construction industry.
There’s no release date offered on the film’s website, and comments left there suggest that the filmmakers, Jake Wake-Walker and Marc Webb, seek funding through Kickstarter. Here’s hoping the full-length film gets made. If the trailer is any clue, Dini’s life and passion will make for some truly compelling cinema.
Here’s how the D-Shape website describes the printing process:
The process begins with 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.
Via: The Verge
