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I hate the antichrist
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this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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chapotraphouse
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That was my first thought too but apparently it's ceramic 3D printing (the only ceramic printers I've seen are like $MM). I wonder how that can possibly scale to be as cheap as what mossy earth is doing by epoxying sand onto a metal frame and metal twist tying coral fragments onto it.
there are burn filaments for ceramic (and metal) i believe, so they are porous, but pure ceramic after burnout (they have like 30% plastic/70% ceramic, plastic is burnt out at like 700c or something and leaves ceramic/metal part*), and can be printed with cheap 3d printers
*with lots of holes in it, so not structurally sound, but here it's not important and probably even desirable.
Yep that's correct, with ceramic you don't end up with any plastic in the final product. I'm more familiar with SLA ceramic printers which use a resin, and FDM metal printing that uses a kind of wax, also burned out in a tube furnace.
I more meant that ceramic 3d printing is not automatically $mm, at least after journalism word converter, it can mean just ceramic fdm mass-friendly approach.
although from 2019 i found they (maybe different they?) used something like cornstarch filament, even friendlier i assume (https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2019/october/3D-printed-coral-study-damselfish-Danielle-Dixson/)
Gotcha, yeah unfortunately FDM ceramic still has crazy high spool costs so I don't think it really puts it into the same ballpark as using simpler materials. We're talking like $500 a spool, just one printed piece like you see in the picture looks like it would take an entire spool or more and could be the better part of $1K. I'm comparing to Mossy Earth's strategy of binding together metal rods and coating with sand, which after labor lands at $26 per structure.
Having lots of holes is a crucial part of reef structures. It provides surface area for more things to live in