Printing with poo
It was hard to find someone that wanted to loan their paste printer to print poo with, as you can imagine, so we decided to make our own. We hacked a 3D printer into a paste printer by watching a YouTube tutorial, 3D printing the missing parts, and eventually assembled everything together. Once we had the hardware figured out, we focused on the software. We generated our own printing language in Rhino and Grasshopper, which gave us more control over the printing process.
When everything was ready, we started printing with our three favorite filament recipes. It took a few tries to find the right viscosity of the filaments. On top of that, we had to find the best setting-combination of layer height, printing speed and extrusion speed. Only one of the three recipes checked all the boxes: manure with sodium alginate, calcium carbonate, tapioca starch and glycerin. This became the recipe we did further 3D-printing material tests with.
It was hard to find someone that wanted to loan their paste printer to print poo with, as you can imagine, so we decided to make our own. We hacked a 3D printer into a paste printer by watching a YouTube tutorial, 3D printing the missing parts, and eventually assembled everything together. Once we had the hardware figured out, we focused on the software. We generated our own printing language in Rhino and Grasshopper, which gave us more control over the printing process.
When everything was ready, we started printing with our three favorite filament recipes. It took a few tries to find the right viscosity of the filaments. On top of that, we had to find the best setting-combination of layer height, printing speed and extrusion speed. Only one of the three recipes checked all the boxes: manure with sodium alginate, calcium carbonate, tapioca starch and glycerin. This became the recipe we did further 3D-printing material tests with.
