http://gigaom.com/2013/10/06/this-secretive-startup-plans-to-3d-print-custom-affordable-wood-furniture/
This secretive startup plans to 3D print custom, affordable wood furniture 4 AXYZ founder and CEO Samir Shah has an idea. Instead of working with layers of cheap wood, he wants to work with layers of nice wood. And he'll do it with 3D printing. "Effectively what you're seeing is solid wood furniture is too expensive and quality is dropping. We have something that is not rocket science, even though it is patent pending," Shah said. They show a picture of a chair that has the outline of a LazyBoy, except it is hollow and appears to be made of plywood...plywood that is almost entirely curved. This sort of curved laminate furniture is not exactly new, but in the past they were high-end, expensive, hand-built sculptures. This company is claiming they can do this with "mass customization" techniques. 4 AXYZ won't disclose how the technology works. Shah said the big secret is how the machine cuts the wood and secures layers together. The company is currently looking for investors. Disappointingly, the article never explains how the tech works. We're left to speculate that it is something like a CNC laminate cutter, and some other automation for assembling the layers and forming the curves. Technically, it has no resemblance to "printing" at all. It's just a specialized CNC. (But I guess your article gets more hits if you label it 3D printing.) -Tom _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
