CitySens and the Eurecat technology centre have teamed up to develop gardening solutions harnessing 3D printing based on recycled and biodegradable materials and designed to foster the sustainability and circular economy of the products marketed by this Tarragona-based company specialising in items for enjoying nature at home or in the workplace.
When manufacturing these products, “we are always looking for materials and production techniques that have the lowest possible environmental impact, which is why we turned our attention to additive manufacturing,” says Xavier Rius Ruiz, co-founder of CitySens. He underlines the cooperation with Eurecat as a technology partner to validate “that this technology was sufficiently robust to propose products that would come onto the market and be successful.”
To make this possible, a study has been conducted on adjusting manufacturing parameters with 3D printing technologies “which is crucial to get products with the necessary features such as the watertightness of the pots or mechanical resistance for plant shelving with recycled or biodegradable materials,” adds Miquel Domingo Espin, a researcher in Eurecat’s New Manufacturing Processes Unit. “These adjustments mean we can reduce the amount of material used and manufacturing time, rendering the process more efficient and sustainable.”
The project, which is part of the Digital Innovation Hubs Support Programme (PADIH) funded by the European Union under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, has selected fused filament fabrication (FFF) as the additive manufacturing technology and used wood-based PLA, a biodegradable material made from renewable resources. The prototypes developed in the project have been technically and economically validated under real-world operating conditions.
