The Viaggio A Shamballa event, held at the WASP headquarters in Massa Lombarda, Italy, was a two-day conference on the topic of Large scale 3d printing and green building. IAAC joined the gathering, structured around open workshops and talks from different experts in the field of 3d printing, where IAAC Robotic Expert Alexandre Dubor gave an interesting talk on the advances that have been taking place within the Open Thesis Fabrication programme.

The OTF students visiting the conference were exposed to different types of printers, materials and printing methods ranging from 3d printed prosthetics to vertical farms.

The main highlight of the event was the 3d printed clay house using rice husk as an additive to the material. The printer used was the WASP Big Delta 12m printer which is the biggest 3d printer in the world. The addition of the rice husk to the clay material helped add some strength and at the same time by variation in the proportions they were using it as an infill material. It took the team 10 days to print the entire structure except the roof.

The evolution of WASP’s 3d printers were also and display which gave an idea of how much they had advanced through the years. Printing with the help of a wood based extrusion material was an interesting new technology which was being showcased at the conference as well. This used 85% wood in the mixture making the print very light. They also added different natural colouring to the mix thus showing the different possibilities it had.

The trip was an amazing opportunity for the OTF students giving them exposure to the some of current happenings and advances in the field of 3d printing on a large scale.