Sustainable 3D Printing in Play-Dough
We are developing materials, tools, and processes that make 3D printing fast, cheap, colorful, and biodegradable. Our custom “play-dough” is made from corn and wheat flour, sand, water and a few other ingredients. You can use it to make striking full-color 3D prints, dyed with food coloring, that are compostable. The material supports an alternative and sustainable workflow for 3D printing.
Years:
2022-current
Collaborators: Leah Buechley, Ruby Ta, Alyssa Johnson, and other lab members
Publications:
Leah Buechley and Ruby Ta. 2023. 3D Printable Play-Dough: New Biodegradable Materials and Creative Possibilities for Digital Fabrication. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580813
Material Development
We developed our custom play-dough by tuning both material rheology–through the selection of different ingredients–and print parameters. A range of different recipes were investigated for their printability, structural stability, shrinkage characteristics, and strength. See below for results of a test focused on structural stability.
Software
We developed custom design software, built on our ExtruderTurtle library, that enables us to design in full color. The software outputs a preview of your design along with a diagram that indicates how you should load your print tube to achieve the desired coloring, see below.
Sustainability
Our material is recyclable, compostable, and prints made from it are easy to repair with white glue, see below. It supports a new inexpensive, accessible, and sustainable workflow in 3D printing. This workflow eliminates harmful plastic waste from the 3D printing pipeline and we are optimistic that it can help lessen the ecological impact of this practice, particularly in educational settings.
Recipes and more information can be found here and also in our 2023 CHI paper. See a video of the printing process below, or on YouTube.