Marita Sauerwein

The circular economy requires high-value material recovery to enable multiple product lifecycles. This implies the need for additive manufacturing to focus on the development and use of low-impact materials that, after product use, can be reconstituted to their original properties in terms of printability and functionality. We therefore investigated reprintable materials, made from bio-based resources. In order to equally consider material properties and recovery during development, we took a design approach to material development. In this way, the full material and product life cycle was studied, including multiple recovery steps. We applied this method to the development of a reprintable bio-based composite material for extrusion paste printing. This material is derived from natural and abundant resources, i.e., ground mussel shells and alginate. The alginate in the printing paste is ionically cross-linked after printing to create a water-resistant material. This reaction can be reversed to retain a printable paste. We studied paste composition, printability and material properties and 3D printed a design prototype. Alginate as a binder shows good printing and reprinting behaviour, as well as promising material properties. It thus demonstrates the concept of reprintable materials.

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The use of materials derived from waste is one of the prominent ways to contribute to sustainable product design. However, there is a stark gap in literature concerning how people appraise such materials. In this paper, we present our initial attempts to understand the aesthetic appreciation of materials, in particular those derived from discarded raw materials, i.e., revived materials. Two studies were conducted for which we took the aesthetic principle unity-in-variety as the departure point. In the first study, we explored material appraisals by testing whether different visual and tactile qualities interrelate with each other in a similar or contradictory way. Based on these findings, two revived materials were modified and our main assumptions were further explored in Study 2. We outline our findings and show that the aesthetic appreciation of a material can be influenced by the (in)congruity between visual and tactile qualities of the material.