First Visit to 3d Maker Zone

A friend who works on a few projects with the team at the 3D Maker Zone in Haarlem suggested I visit them, and I finally went there today.

In the past I have worked with laser-cut bamboo and other materials to construct cases and other hardware for various projects. Lately I’ve been transitioning to learning more about 3D scanning and printing, and a friend offered to arrange a visit to the 3D Maker Zone, a professional fabrication lab and learning centre in Haarlem.

I was able to get a tour from Peter Van Den Bosch and talk to some of the staff there, and saw a lot of new techniques and materials in their projects. For starters, they are working with an incredible range of materials:

1. Plastic recycled from industries like fishing and medicine.
2. More sustainable materials like plastic impregnated with elephant grass.
3. Large-format projects made from MDF created from existing nearby wood waste.
4. Sandstone and Marble printing using dust leftover from industry.
5. Concrete structures created using a 3D printer.

I also saw a range of large-scale fabrication equipment. If you’re used to desktop or workshop 3D printers, the scale is just incredible, everything from full-size furniture up to houses. Among many other things, they’re using software from Adaxis to program industrial robot arms like this one to act as large-format 3D printers:

So What are They Doing with All This?

I only saw a handful of the projects they’re working on, but what I saw was hugely impressive. First, I visited the showroom for More Than Layers, who manufacture furniture using 3D printing.

The site also has an impressive large-scale structure assembled from machine-cut pieces of MDF. Check out this full sized “Haiti House” designed by Pieter Stoutjesdijk:

If nothing else, I definitely picked up a few new joining techniques for the next time I attempt a laser-cut project:

They also showed me some of their efforts to scan and reconstruct historical sculptures, taking broken or damaged sculptures and printing reconstructed replacements for all or part of the sculpture. In one project, they created a replacement hand for a damaged sculpture in the Wereldmuseum (formerly the Tropenmuseum), you can see a copy here:

This was hugely encouraging to see, as in part I was there in part to talk to them about preserving some of the works of Hildo Krop, a prolific sculptor commissioned by the city to create sculptures for many public works from the mid-1920s on. At the moment I live in a building adorned with some of his smaller sculptures, many of which have been damaged over time.

My hope is to put together a project to scan and reproduce less damaged reproductions of the same sculptures from the same molds that adorn a contemporary of our building located in Noord. Fingers crossed for more news on that front down the road.

As if all that wasn’t impressive enough, they have created an amazing space. Check out their project to convert their ductwork into a model of an Apollo rocket!

Conclusion

My goal for this year is to meet more people and learn from them, and I’m definitely off to a good start with this visit. I hope to get the chance to work with them in the future, but if nothing else I certainly have a ton of new ideas now.