Don’t Want To Build A Sandcastle? Print It

3D printing has been used in practically every industry that you can think of. It can be used to build pretty much anything, so why not a sandcastle? A team from Fab Lab Barcelona, as reported in 3D Printer Makes Intricate Sand Castles, Wins All the Sand Castle Competitions (PC World), have developed a 3D printer called the Stone Spray that uses natural, organic materials for construction. Sand, soil or other natural, earthy things can be used as the build material.

The natural material (in the video it’s sand) is placed into the printer, which has a liquid spray system. This liquid acts as the binder in a regular 3D printer (such as a ZPrinter), and it consists of an environmentally sustainable liquid, a compound called Polypavement.

The 3D printer is hooked up to a computer to tell it what to create via software files. The printer then proceeds to create the design as would any other 3D printer would -- in layers. The Stone Spray works by having an extrusion nozzle spray the sand in the appropriate pattern and a separate extrusion nozzle spray the liquid binder to ‘harden’ the sand.