In the Details: Making a 3D-Printed Product Line That Doesn’t Look Like It Was 3D-Printed
Posted in: In the Details
While desktop 3D printers have made rapid prototyping at home as easy as the push of a button, that accessibility comes at a price—a much lower level of quality than with traditional manufacturing methods. As a result, desktop 3D printing is still not a viable option for making finished products. At least, that’s the general assumption—one that the New York-based Italian designers Barbara Busatta and Dario Buzzini hope to challenge with their Machine Series, a line of containers that are ready for use hot off the printer.
Busatta and Buzzini’s collaboration was born out of a promise to do a project together each year under the studio name ICOSAEDRO, each time focusing on a specific material or craft as part of a joint effort to learn a new methodology. For their inaugural effort, Buzzini, a design director at IDEO, said that he and Busatta, a freelance art director, were drawn to the “artisanal process” of Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), a 3D-printing technology that involves melting plastic filament and extruding it layer-on-layer to build a form.
The Machine Series includes five containers with lids. There is a black version in three different shapes (top) and red and yellow versions (above).
Until now, FDM has not exactly been a fount of high-end product design. “FDM nowadays is a synonym for tchotchkes and miniatures for Yoda busts,” Buzzini says. But he and Busatta felt that there was an opportunity to bring a new level of craft to an imperfect technique, noting that “it felt like the right starting point to express our point of view on what could be a way to bring craftsmanship into the future.”
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