For most businesses, the hype of the 3D printing industry was an opportunity to innovate with new technology and make a few bucks, or vice versa depending on which was prioritized. For others, like Italy’s WASP (World’s Advanced Saving Project), 3D printing presented an entirely new way of making things, even an inspiration for utopian ideals, such as affordable housing for all and an economy without money.
When WASP began manufacturing professional desktop 3D printers, the goal was actually to fulfill the backronym of the company’s namesake, the World’s Advanced Saving Project. In 2012, WASP began selling such systems as the PowerWASP and the DeltaWASP in order to fund research dedicated to, well, saving the world. The first project toward that end was the creation of the BigDelta 3D printer, which was designed to 3D print sustainable housing for those in need.
Throughout the development process, the Italian firm has created unique technologies, embarked on other world-saving endeavors and even reimagined a new world financial system dubbed “the maker economy.” With the BigDelta officially unveiled in 2015, WASP now has an even greater task at hand—the successful completion of a clay and straw house at the SHAMBALLA Technological Village in Massa Lombarda, Italy.
What drives a company to work toward innovating not just technology but also entire socioeconomic paradigms? ENGINEERING.com went to the source and asked the company’s founder, Massimo Moretti.
The Makers Manifesto
In the “About Us” sections of most corporate websites, one will find, perhaps, a brief history of the company, a list of the board of directors and a sentence or two about a commitment to innovation and solving the problems of our world.
What you won’t find is a manifesto that reads, “The power of money and finance is based on the monopoly of production capacity; the WASP project works to make it public,” “The Earth’s resources are not enough to support the existing population explosion and to change the growth models is no longer an option but rather an urgent need” or “Everything is mind, everything is change, reality is the result of shared thoughts.” These are just three of the seven points outlined in WASP’s manifesto.
Moretti elaborated on the guiding philosophy of the company. “WASP’s philosophy is based on the theme of low-cost production, of making with what you have at the moment. WASP was born from a laboratory that develops projects, and, for a model of development, we chose the wasp because it creates with what it has available,” Moretti said.
The Delta 2040 3D printer from WASP. (Image courtesy of WASP.)
From the very foundation, WASP’s approach to the 3D printing marketplace is unique, seemingly driven, not by profit, but for actually helping a world in need. Stating the belief that “the house is a primary need and a right,” money, for WASP, is merely a means of funding that project.
Moretti began building 3D printers as a path toward developing the large-scale BigDelta to construct entire homes using local resources for those in need. He explained, “We are developing low environmental impact and low-cost mixtures of materials, [as well as] projects that take account of these materials and an architectural processes based on these projects. All these elements are collected in a plan that can be replicated with the big printer, while our DeltaWASP printers are reproductions on a smaller scale of the big printer, and they are produced as economical support means for the bigger project of the printed house.”
From Little Deltas to BigDelta
The firm began with the PowerWASP, which may have also been the first desktop 3D printer capable of milling and engraving. WASP then went on to create the DeltaWASP, which has become a highly respected machine in the 3D printing industry known for its precision and speed. As Moretti pointed out, printers like the DeltaWASP were meant to both provide a means for funding the house printing project as well as a platform for better understanding the engineering required for the large-scale project.
Throughout the development of the BigDelta, new iterations of machines and printing systems arrived on the WASP shop, illustrating the cross-pollination between the house printer and smaller WASP products.
For instance, when designing the BigDelta, WASP ran into issues, such as the ability to pause and restart a print where it left off—a feature inherently necessary for 3D printing large structures that can take days to complete. When the need for such a feature became apparent, while experimenting with the BigDelta, WASP engineers took to creating it.
The programming required was then ported over to the DeltaWASP and other WASP printers, allowing ordinary customers to stop and start prints without issue. This “Resurrection” feature is an important one, particularly in the case of power outages, as any loss in power can ruin a potential print. With WASP machines, however, the data of a print is immediately saved onto an onboard SD card, recording the location and settings of the printer as power is shutting down. Once the printer is restarted, the machine simply loads its last settings and can continue where it left off.
Other important features that have experienced similar cross-pollination include the ability to 3D print clay and other viscous materials. In building the clay extruder for the BigDelta, WASP began to understand techniques necessary for reducing air bubbles, while maintaining pressure as the material was pumped to the printhead. This resulted both in the ability of the BigDelta to construct homes with local clay materials and the liquid deposit modeling (LDM) extruder kit for desktop 3D printers.
As the company approached completion of the BigDelta in 2015, WASP began to fill the niche between its desktop models and the 12-m tall house printer. Most recently, the firm released the DeltaWASP 3MT, a 3-m tall hybrid manufacturing tool. The 3MT is capable of using the aforementioned LDM kit, a milling head or a pellet extruder, a 3D printing extruder capable of using low-cost injection molding pellets, rather than more costly filament.
Moretti explained that, with every bit of progress in the project to 3D print inhabitable structures, WASP is able to improve on the company’s 3D printers. In turn, the company is able to evolve its construction techniques. “In a couple of years, we will have more and more efficient models, faster and cheaper machines, and we will propose a new building approach,” Moretti said.
3D Printing Inhabitable Structures
It took several years, but, in 2015, WASP finally erected the BigDelta 3D printer in the Massa Lombarda commune in the province of Ravenna. Construction of the first adobe home at the open air site began in 2016, with the WASP team continually digging up local materials and mixing them for extrusion out of the massive printer.
Every so often, the WASP team has to unclog the extruder, but, due to the Resurrection feature, getting the printer to resume where it left off is not a problem, according to the team. What seemed to cause more issues was the possibility of rain, which, after the printed structure had reached one meter in height, caused the clay and straw to sag. A quick Internet search revealed that the ancient Romans introduced limestone into their building materials, with about 5 percent limestone bringing about 35 percent more structural integrity to a structure.
When asked about the challenges of 3D printing a house, Moretti listed off a large number of difficulties: “Materials preparation, deposition, the extruder, lowering the energy costs and the times of assembly and dismantling of the printer. Creating a printer able to sediment tons without damaging, deposition codes that optimize the path, systems of material loading able to take in account the printer volume.”
Once the structure reached two meters in height, the team realized that its pump, which was used to feed the material to the extruder, was not strong enough to carry the clay to the printhead. To load the material, the team brought in some scaffolding that enabled them to climb high enough to pour the clay into the hopper before a programmer created a more permanent solution.
By writing a piece of code that brings the printhead down to the ground when a “load material” command is given, the printhead allows builders to insert more material from a reasonable height. Now, the structure has reached 3 meters in height and, once it is 4 meters tall, WASP will add a roof and a door and the habitat will be complete.
Because this technology hasn’t been fully realized until now, Moretti explained, the WASP team is learning many of the obstacles as the project continues. “Without standards that consider this technology, obtaining scientific information about materials related to deposition techniques are not easy to classify,” Moretti said.
With WASP pioneering the approach, discovering and addressing the issues along the way, it will be able to recreate the BigDelta in other locations. More importantly, the firm will be able to leverage the technology to establish what it refers to as the “maker economy.”
The Maker Economy
Moretti described the maker economy as a “self-production economy” or what the Maker movement calls a “prosumer” economy. He said, “In the [existing] industrial economic approach, a person can hope to be included in an industrial process. In the maker economy, however, everyone can become a little self-producer. Digital fabrication machines are instruments of democracy because they give everybody the same opportunity, but at the same time they require care and knowledge.”
The construction taking place in Massa Lombarda is not just a technological demonstration. The BigDelta is the central hub of the SHAMBALLA Technological Village, a sort of Maker commune employing ecofriendly practices. In addition to demonstrating principles of sustainable housing, SHAMBALLA will attempt to consume little energy while promoting the maker economy. Rather than focus on the symbolic success brought about by economic fortune, the maker economy argues that it’s possible to have a self-sufficient way of life using technologies like 3D printing.
“Our aim is to create micro-independent communities born and developed on common knowledge thanks to advanced self-production systems, reachable by everyone,” Moretti is quoted in a recent blog post as saying. “3D printing is a production process that realizes a no-debt house, a house which offers more freedom to people. A dynamic house, able to create economy instead of using it up. A residential unit with no costs of production, and able to answer to primary human needs: housing, food, energy, health, job, culture.”
To expand this concept beyond Massa Lombarda, WASP recently announced the Maker Economy Kit, a shipping container that includes everything necessary to build a local maker economy: a BigDelta for constructing houses, a DeltaWASP 3MT for 3D printing furniture and other medium-sized goods, material recycling systems, and other WASP 3D printers. As depicted in the video below, the kit would be used to first 3D print a home and then everything needed for the house to function off-the-grid, such as a wind power generator and vertical gardens.
A WASP Utopia?
Beginning with the idea of housing as a right, Morretti and his company have managed to execute technological innovation while also attempting to solve real-world problems. Along the way, WASP has both created new 3D printing methods and prosthetics for those in need. This unique history might make one wonder what a world would look like if WASP’s vision of a utopia were to be realized.
When asked how WASP would paint the future of humanity in the next 10 years, Morretti said, “Maybe we won’t have to wait for 10 years. All the knowledge is available; all the resources are reachable from everybody. Now, already, in the world there is the knowledge to live healthy and comfortable, but this doesn’t happen because the common motivation is not the widespread wealth: since thoughts take shape, inevitably the world takes another direction if the thought is different, so if we will succeed in creating a common view based on the collective necessity, then the world that we have imagined, and created, will take place.”
He continued, “We called this world Shamballa. It is a technological park where we put into practice our knowledge for human basic needs (as food and work). All the machines and the necessary projects are collected in a container called ‘maker economy starter kit’ that we will show at the Maker Faire Rome. If many people of goodwill and competence will join us for a better world, this ideal world will take shape. At the moment, there is not a real possibility of self-production, but as we know, the future depends on the motivation of people. Our aim is to focus on the right motivation and to provide the instruments that make visible and believable the transition possibility.”
As the existing economic system attempts to recover from the recent depression, the world’s most powerful nation deploys troops across 135 countries, 1.6 billion people lack adequate housing and a worsening climate crisis threatens to exacerbate all of the above, it seems as though the planet is in need of some solution. Whether or not that solution is something like the maker economy is impossible to tell, but we won’t know until we’ve tried, and WASP appears to be at least one company in the 3D printing community that is trying.