Searching for biological feedstock material: 3D printing of wood particles from house borer and drywood termite frass

Abstract

Frass (fine powdery refuse or fragile perforated wood produced by the activity of boring insects) of larvae of the European house borer (EHB) and of drywood termites was tested as a natural and novel feedstock for 3D-printing of wood-based materials. Small particles produced by the drywood termite Incisitermes marginipennis and the EHB Hylotrupes bajulus during feeding in construction timber, were used. Frass is a powdery material of particularly consistent quality that is essentially biologically processed wood mixed with debris of wood and faeces. The filigree-like particles flow easily permitting the build-up of wood-based structures in a layer wise fashion using the Binder Jetting printing process. The quality of powders produced by different insect species was compared along with the processing steps and properties of the printed parts. Drywood termite frass with a Hausner Ratio HR = 1.1 with ρBulk = 0.67 g/cm3 and ρTap = 0.74 g/cm3 was perfectly suited to deposition of uniformly packed layers in 3D printing. We suggest that a variety of naturally available feedstocks could be used in environmentally responsible approaches to scientific material sciences/additive manufacturing.

Enzyme-Assisted Circular Additive Manufacturing as an Enabling Technology for a Circular Bioeconomy—A Conceptual Review

“…When selecting the printing process, different technologies utilize different dosage forms, either lyophilized or liquid preparations. Lyophilized preparations are particularly suitable for binder jetting, in which they can be pre-mixed with the powdered biopolymer, and then the liquid required for the chemical reaction can be selectively applied locally [106,111]. Classic application methods for liquid preparations are extrusion-based processes such as liquid deposition modeling, in which the enzyme and substrate come together before the actual printing [101,116].…”

Use of Wood in Additive Manufacturing: Review and Future Prospects

“…Wood particles could also be used in binder jetting [ 38 ], where wood powder could be mixed with commercial ZP102 material from the Z Corporation or other raw materials [ 39 ], where binder (gypsum, cellulose, sodium silicate and cement) was mixed with wood in a dry state and water was sprayed on as an activator. Since grinding wood into fine particles is energy and time consuming, other sources of wood particles are being researched, e.g., wood particles from house borers and drywood termite frass [ 40 ].…”

Bio-Mimicry: Tree rings and three-dimensional printing – Preliminary biomimetic experiments with fused deposition modeling using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene filament

“…Additive manufacturing (AM) is an emerging way for printing biomimetic structures. There have been many studies focused on bio-mimicry of wood or wood-related issues, including biomimetics of living wood using AM (Thibaut 2019); wood tissue printing (Markstedt et al 2019); powder-based 3D-printing by binder jetting (BJ) of dry-wood termite frass to bio-mimic the biodegraded wood (Plarre et al 2021); 3D-printed wood warped seedpod by wooden ink with polydisperse wood powder (Kam et al 2022); mechanical properties of printed (stereolithography) composite composed of poplar wood flour modified with methacrylate-based resin (Zhang et al 2021); review data for polylactic acid (PLA) filament modified with plant-sourced materials (Bhagia et al 2021); plant-derived materials used in 3D printing (Sharma et al 2021); biomass-derived 3D printing materials (Ji et al 2020); robotic arms for cellulose-based filament deposition (Iyer and Hasenson 2019); and lignin types and manners of printing of lignin using AM (Ebers et al 2021).…”