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Coral Reefs Restoration Pursued with Binder Jet 3D Printing https://ift.tt/3ATOuN0 According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 25% of all marine life is dependent upon the biodiverse underwater ecosystems known as coral reefs. Unfortunately, as coral reef conservation organization SECORE International reports, 55% of the world’s coral reefs have died over the last thirty years, and we could lose 99% of the existing ones within the next century if something isn’t done to help. Overfishing and pollution both majorly threaten coral reefs, but another big issue is climate change, which is why a design technologist in California is using 3D printing to help save the marine ecosystem by restoring coral reefs that have been negatively impacted. This design technologist, Alex Schofield, is the director of Objects and Ideograms, which, according to the website, has “an obsession of materiality and its meaning to us in various global contexts.” The workshop has used 3D printing for other projects like a coffee table and coffee bar, but Schofield has been working since 2019 to use his knowledge of coral research, computational design, and 3D modeling to create complex surfaces out of calcium carbonate—a limestone from which coral skeletons are made.
This material substrate is biomimicry at its finest—the calcium carbonate is ground down into a fine powder, which is then 3D printed, using binder jet technology, in order to copy the tough, textural structure that houses the living polyps in coral.
Together with the California College of the Arts, Schofield’s workshop has attached the 3D printed calcium carbonate scaffolds to an environmental demonstration project and research platform called the Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab, created by designers and architects and deployed in the San Francisco Bay in 2019. The lab is a floating breakwater structure that uses an “ecologically optimized fiber-reinforced polymer composite substrate,” and features varied topographies that perform tasks both above and below the water, such as channeling rainwater into watershed pools for intertidal habitats and providing underwater habitats.
The workshop’s project has secured a proprietary pending patent for the production and application of its proprietary 3D printed calcium carbonate material, which can be fabricated in a variety of forms to accommodate many aquatic organisms, in the hopes of offering a healthy, diverse underwater ecosystem to restore coral reefs.
Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com September 29, 2021 at 07:24AM
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