Dutch Designer Prints His Own Furniture
Graduation projects are sometimes surprisingly good! Inspired by an old 3D printer, Eindhoven-based student Dirk Vander Kooij came up with the idea to build a machine specialized in making furniture.
After getting himself an old Chinese industrial robot, Vander Kooij reprogrammed it into a 3D printer to print furniture using materials from old refrigerators. The result is an award-winning collection of chairs called Endless Pulse.
Vander Kooij’s robot is able to produce a chair in a variety of colors and designs in about three hours. He claims that his method works 40 times faster than traditional 3D printing and would allow him to produce up to 4,000 chairs/year. Each failed prototype created by Kooij was re-used in the production of other prototypes leading to the creation of final products. The chairs are available in every color imaginable.
Plastic furniture is usually mass-produced by injecting material in expensive molds, and each slight modification to the furniture requires the creation of another mold. 3D printing has a considerable advantage over traditional plastic furniture production because it can be customized and personalized to create unique items. Click here to check out a video of the production process of the Endless Pulse series.
