Italian rider Francesco Furlani has completed over 4,500-kilometer journey from Italy to Nordkapp, Norway’s North Cape, driving a three-wheeled Piaggio Ape TM 703 fitted with a camper body built entirely through large-format 3D printing. The shell weighs around 70 kilograms, compared with roughly 200 kilograms for a comparable fiberglass structure, a 130-kilogram difference that determined whether the trip was possible at all. On a vehicle as payload-constrained as the Ape, that margin was what allowed room for a bed, a kitchen, batteries, and food and water supplies without pushing the vehicle over its limit.
Two Italian companies made the build possible. Material and manufacturing startup Nugae developed the material and provided engineering support for the shell, which was printed by a Nugae customer on one of the company’s machines. DCab handled the engineering work of turning that shell into a functioning vehicle body.
A Foam Engineered for the Printer
The shell is made from CoreLight3D, a proprietary thermoplastic foam that Nugae developed from recycled polypropylene specifically for robotic large-format additive manufacturing. In raw form, the material has a density of about 300 kilograms per cubic meter. Once printed into thin walls and hollow internal geometries, though, the finished part’s effective density drops to roughly a third of that, around 100 kilograms per cubic meter. Walls are only a few millimeters thick, and material is deposited only along the paths that actually carry structural load, rather than uniformly across the part.
That approach creates an engineering tension familiar to anyone who works in lightweight structures: stripping out mass tends to strip out sealing and stiffness along with it. Most weight-reduction methods in large-format printing accept that trade-off. This build was designed specifically to avoid it, aiming to preserve the weatherproofing, insulation, and long-term durability a road vehicle needs despite the reduced material volume. Where extra rigidity is required, the printed core can be bonded with fiberglass or carbon-fiber skins, adding stiffness without adding significant weight.
From Print Bed to Structural Part
Nugae calls its full manufacturing method UL-LFAM, for Ultra-Light Large Format Additive Manufacturing. It combines the CoreLight3D material with a patented extruder, six-axis industrial robots, proprietary reinforcement strategies, and the company’s own NU-Slice slicing software. The output is hollow or ribbed structures with reinforcement concentrated at load points rather than spread evenly through the part.
Parts come off the printer as structural semi-finished pieces, ready for lamination, bonding, finishing, and paint, rather than as a finished component on their own. For the Ape camper, the shell was produced on a NU-Print Large machine.
Adapting the Shell to the Ape
Printing a lightweight structural shell solved only part of the problem. Making it function as an actual vehicle body required a separate integration effort, which fell to DCab. DCab adapted the printed geometry to the mechanical constraints of the Ape TM 703 platform, working out mounting points, weight distribution, and system compatibility so the printed cell could serve as a load-bearing vehicle body rather than a shelter simply bolted onto the frame.
Furlani, who piloted the Ape on the full Italy-to-Nordkapp route, credited the collaboration between the two companies for making the build possible. “Behind this project there’s much more than meets the eye: research, innovation and a shared vision have given life to something truly unique,” he said. “On one side, DCab, which turned an ambitious idea into reality thanks to its own experience in vehicle programming. On the other, Nugae, whose innovative material made it possible to build an extremely lightweight living cell, without compromising on quality or performance.”
Closing the Weight-vs-Durability Gap in Printed Vehicle Structures
Nugae’s strategy targets a gap that has long dogged large-format 3D printing: cutting material to save weight usually means sacrificing the sealing, stiffness, and durability a real vehicle body needs. Its CoreLight3D foam and UL-LFAM process are built as one package so weight comes off without those trade-offs, with Nugae supplying design and engineering support to customers running their own printers rather than acting as a standalone print shop.
Similar ambitions have surfaced before without solving both problems at once. In 2018, Canadian outfit Create Café chased a size record with The Wave, a 13-foot camper trailer printed as a single seamless piece on a custom ErectorBot using PETG plastic, aimed at eliminating leaks and rot rather than cutting mass.
More recently, Buckley Conversions built a Mercedes-Benz eSprinter camper interior almost entirely by large-format 3D printing, coming in roughly 680 kilograms lighter than the plywood-and-aluminum fit-out it replaced, by moving load-bearing furniture and panels onto printed structures.
Nugae and DCab apply that weight-reduction imperative to one of the smallest, most payload-limited platforms on the road.
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Featured image shows Francesco Furlani and a three-wheeled Piaggio Ape TM 703 fitted with a camper body built entirely through large-format 3D printing. Photo via Francesco Furlani.
