Move over Michealangelo – 3D Printing with Marble

For millennia marble has been one of the most impressive materials for building and sculpture. However, marble quarrying wastes material and creates plumes of calcium carbonate dust.  Unfortunately, this dust represents a major environmental and public health risk.

In an effort to eliminate the negative effects of marble dust, engineers created MarbleEcoDesign.  This company has found a way to bind collected marble dust with a photo-reactive polymer creating a 3D printable marble material.

According to MarbleEcoDesign’s website, “Our mission is to reutilize the waste material resulting from the marble production process. Sludge and waste are a consequence of the production system, this marble dust is complex and expensive to dispose of. But if mixed with special resins and catalyzed with UV rays, these substances can be … transformed [into] raw material ideal for 3D printing.”

MarbleEcoDesign has partnered with Design Lab Frosinone to create a fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printer that can create parts with a tremendous level of accuracy. MarbleEcoDesign boasts that “…it has been possible to achieve step resolutions as fine as ~0.5 μm along each of the three motion axes (53 μm for ten steps). The extruder features a 0.15 mm steel nozzle, capable of producing 0.16 mm drops.”

While MarbleEcoDesigns hasn’t stated when their printer will be available, it’s safe to say marble has finally entered the additive manufacturing age.

Images and Video Courtesy of MarbleEcoDesign