Anyone who thought Chia Pets were nothing more than a novelty didn’t realize that they would set the foundation for what was to come in the 21st Century. Those ceramic pots shaped like heads and were seeded in just such a way as to grow the chia so that it would resemble hair or fur. The printGREEN 3D printer out of the University of Maribor in Slovenia takes that idea one step further and lays out grass seeding in any pattern you can imagine.
The machine is a modified CNC machine that extrudes a paste made up of water, soil and seeds into any pre-programmed shape. The subsequent layers are developed over time with the growth of the plant-life printed onto the substrate, eventually yielding depth. The printGreen does have a non-organic Z-axis as well, which has allowed them to print some mud bowls infused with grass.
Taken one step further, we can imagine the printGREEN machine tracing the design for the walls of a semi-organic home. Something like carbon-reinforced foliage could grow up out of the dirt to form walls and the printGREEN could top the structure off with a roof.
printGREEN offers a lot to get inspired about and you can see the machine extrude its own name in this video. A premonition of the robot’s future self-awareness, perhaps?
