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3-D Printer Creates Buildings From Dust and Glue

Posted by timothy on from the one-layer-at-a-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes "D-Shape, an innovative new 3-D printer, builds solid structures like sculptures, furniture, even buildings from the ground up. The device relies on sand and magnesium glue to actually build structures layer by layer from solid stone. The designer, Enrico Dini, is even talking with various organizations about making the printer compatible with moon dust, paving the way for an instant moonbase!"

4 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Sand and Magnesium as resources... by Dilligent · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...sounds like a great choice as resources to use. As Sand is basically silicon and readily available, magnesium is also the 7th most abundant in th earths crust. It seems like this thing could go a long way towards very cheap mass production of all sorts of solid things very cheaply. There is also the RepRap project but they use plastics which I'm afraid are quite expensive as resource, although they kind of target a different area. I'm excited by this, I've been following these ideas for a while and it seems to be going somewhere, I guess we're getting closer to general purpose building machines.

  2. Re:Moondust-From Wikipedia by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Informative

    Can you say bad Idea?

    Fiberglass particulate is just as nasty and it's in your home right now! *ominous look upwards* Oh, wait... it's sealed behind a wall. Nevermind. Same principle apples to "space dust". Build the structure, then coat the insides or attach walls to make it a happy fun place for all.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  3. The summary links to a blog quoting a blog ... by IMustBeNewHere · · Score: 5, Informative

    The original story is longer, with more pictures...

  4. Re:Moondust-From Wikipedia by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's called regolith and isn't smooth.

    Regolith is the geological name for for dust covered Lunar surface. Dust is the name for the dust. (Kinda like a beach is made up of sand.)
     

    Basically, it's different enough from Earth sand and dust to be interesting, but Earth grit is still abrasive. You probably wouldn't have any more trouble with your lenses than you would on Earth.

    Earth grit, which isn't exactly common outside of sandy or windblown areas, is abrasive. Earth dust, which like Lunar dust is ubiquitous, isn't. So to some extent you're comparing apples (ubiquitous non abrasive Earth dust) to oranges (ubiquitous abrasive Lunar dust.)
     

    Wait... haven't we already sent people to the moon? If it was going to wreck our solar panels, lenses, or people, wouldn't we have already found that out?

    We have already found out that in the very short term (think hours) Lunar dust is highly damaging to moving parts. much more so than terrestrial dust. (It even damages things that you wouldn't normally think of as a moving part - like folds in clothing, or between the fingers of gloves.) We don't really have enough experience with long terms operations in Lunar dust, especially in and around operations that will disturb the dust.
     
    But it's pretty clear that the dust is going to be a major problem for equipment like the machine described in TFA, as well as for mining machines associated with recovering lunar water.
     

    I think that humans won't have too much trouble with it as far as inhaling goes - it'll get trapped in mucus as well as all the other dust we inhale.

    Yeah, that's why we make people like miners, metal workers, woodworkers, and others who work around artificially produced (and thus still sharp) dust wear personal protective equipment.