3D-printed ‘keystones’ open the door to cheap, sturdy DIY furniture
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, 05-03-2014 at 12:44 PM (4792 Views)
Back when 3D printing was just kicking off, there was much talk of a future where people could download new furniture designs, print them, and furnish their living rooms with new pieces whenever they pleased. Despite the fact that 3D printing your own custom-designed furniture is totally possible now, it hasn’t really caught on. This is mostly due to the fact that 3D printers aren’t a common household appliance yet, but even if they were, making a full-sized piece of furniture typically requires you to print a boatload of small pieces and snap them together to create something bigger, which isn’t very convenient.
But who says you have to print the entire piece of furniture? Dutch Studio Minale-Maeda has devised an alternative with “keystones” — a series cleverly-designed connectors that allow you to join pieces of wood together with a single 3D-printed piece to create furniture. This way, instead of burning through a bunch of PLA filament to make a zillion different sections that snap together, you print a single keystone at home and get the remaining materials from your local hardware store.
Minale-Maeda showcased a handful of different keystone designs at Milan’s Salone del Mobile, including ones for coffee tables, dining tables, coat stands, and a few more elaborate pieces that use two keystones. Despite the fact that the connectors are designed to work with plain, standard-sized lumber, the finished furniture is fairly attractive when fully assembled.From the Designers:
In line with previous investigations in the potentials of multi-directional material translations (digital to analogue to building-block construction), open-source schematics (from gerrit rietveld drawings to the online lego community), and novel forms of distribution (such as downloadable design), keystones reduce the design of a piece of furniture to a single connector – a compact piece that can be 3d printed on-location. the keystone holds together the various components of a table or chair, which can be fabricated using basic workshop tools or a 2d cnc router, without the need for joinery skills. with keystones, only the most essential part of the furniture needs to be shipped; the rest can be made from the materials at hand.