             
          
No,this is not a shiny abstract art piece, but a huge Ultimaker…really…allow me to explain:
Architectburo DUS has an ambitious project, called de ‘Kamermaker‘ unveilled last sunday at the pre-launch of Picnic .‘Kamermaker’ is a dutch combination of words which is best translated as ‘room maker’ and you should take this quite literally, the ultimate goal of this project is to print rooms, exhibition halls and even temporary shelters after a natural disaster!
Yes, it is a bold, ambitions and a somewhat crazy project….but hé in 3d printer world, crazy is kinda normal.
This was before the grand opening on Sunday so it wasn’t quite ready yet 
There are 3 main differences between the kamermaker and the Ultimaker apart from the obvious size:
- Their is no z-ax plateau instead they have opted to make the printer-head height adjustable.(see pic.)
- It doesn’t use regular thread-based plastics, since the printing cost would become too expensive, so the choice fell on a granulate based extruder which greatly reduces the printing cost and also helps the environment since the prints can be gridded back for re-use. As a result of these changes, The feed cable (black) needed to be adjusted, the cable has the same function as the bowden tube e.g. guiding the print material into the printer-head, the difference is that its specifically designed to withstand the pressure coming from the extruder and is also heated to keep the plastic in its liquid state, all this combined with a custom made printer-head made big printing possible. (see pics.)
- The software needed to be adjusted due to the scale and the above mentioned adjustments.
The founders of Ultimaker who have all worked closely with DUS architects.
But now the real question: ‘What are the prints like’?
first intelligent design
second print underway
In the last pic. you can see that the print broke, due to shrinkage of the plastic, almond techniek are doing tests to prevent this in the future. And these are exactly the kind of challenges this project wants to address, because kamermaker is above all else a work in progress, making the grand opening of last Sunday the official start of testing to what extremes this big shinny container can be pushed, with the ultimate goal of printing rooms.
And to put things in perspective, this was the result of the very first test print:
To the uninitiated this may look like spaghetti gone wrong but this is good!!!
More updates will be posted on the site in the following months and of course on         de kamermaker.
Check out the video by almond techniek to see it in action:
And finally we would like to thank everyone who have contributed to this project!
