In October of last year, I covered, with a Seussian veneer, the story of a company that plans to print furniture in ways that will make you grin and drumblurnishure. Just kidding. I’m not going to give this update a Dr. Seuss twist, as tempting as it might be. Ok, so, 4 AXYZ, the company that hinted at its ability to 3D print furniture has hinted a little more strongly since then, unveiling a few different items that they claim to have been 3D printed. Their manufacturing process is still a closely guarded secret, so it’s hard to tell if they’re actually additively manufacturing their items or if we’re just giving them unwarranted publicity or both!
As we previously relayed, the company plans to 3D print wooden furniture with quality wood. The stool below is said to have been printed and then assembled in three parts, all without manual intervention. Such a stool would typically require something like nine parts via a traditional hand-assembled method.
With 3D printing it would be possible for customers to customize their furniture orders perhaps adjusting the size of an item to suit their specific needs. Additionally, Signe Brewster at gigaom points out that such a technology would make it possible to print items from composite materials, mixing different types of wood door incorporating something like carbon fiber or Kevlar into a wooden piece of furniture.
The company is also teaming up with the Portuguese firm, A Catedral, to help them create smart windows. The windows will be able to respond to a variety of environmental stimuli, changing colours to let in more light or less light or signaling shifts in the air, like the presence of smoke. Because 4 AXYZ can ‘3D print’ the frame for a window, they will be able to hollow out particular portions to incorporate the circuitry and sensors required for A Catedral‘s project. 4 AXYZ can even place electronic components directly into the window frames. The company’s Founder and CEO, Samir Shah, told Brewster that they envision the ability to stud electronics throughout an entire piece, giving way to smart objects like a 3D printed wooden railing that might sense traffic on a stairway. Such a technique might be valuable to the researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who are currently working on building and retrofitting houses with smart sensors to determine and regulate a home’s energy usage so as to ensure optimum energy efficiency.
It may be that 4 AXYZ’s process would more adequately fall under the category of additive manufacturing than 3D printing, as Shah suggests, with the CEO saying that the method uses no “ink”. The company took a German woodworking machine and modified it to work in three dimensions. The process combines “small, uniformly cut pieces of wood”, according to Brewster. So I am wondering if this is more of an additive assembly technique. Before anyone yells at us for covering a story that may not quite fit the definition of 3D printing, I would like to argue that even a story involving additive assembly might inspire research into more narrowly defined 3D printing processes.
4 AXYZ Is still in the process of seeking funding to purchase its own machine, but given enough of an investment, the company is ready to get their furniture printer onto a workshop floor. It will be fascinating to see how this progresses and the impact it has on the furniture sector.
Source: Gigaom
