Additive manufacturing research on toolpath optimization, material testing, and robotic extrusion, developed during the Advanced Additive Manufacturing course of the Master of Design and Innovation program under the guidance of Juan Cristóbal Karich, ENSAD Paris postgraduate alumnus and co-founder of Latin America Additive Manufacturing (LAMA).
The work focused on print parameters — layer height, extrusion width, print speed, nozzle temperature, and flow rate — and their impact on print quality and material performance.
I investigated lapis lazuli, volcanic ash, grape pomace, biochar, and a quartz-based compound as fillers in high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) and polylactic acid (PLA) matrices, incorporated into each polymer system at 5%, 15%, and 30% by weight.
PLA samples, left to right: lapis lazuli 15%, lapis lazuli 5%, grape pomace 5%, grape pomace 15%
Fillers were sieved on a CISA BA200N to achieve a controlled particle size distribution. Composite filament was produced on a Filabot EX2 and evaluated through aesthetic assessment, manual bending, flotation analysis, and scratch resistance testing, to examine how filler type and loading affect the resulting composite.
Additional work explored robotic extrusion on a Fanuc R-2000iB with a Grasshopper-based workflow.
Fanuc R-2000iB extrusion setup, LAMA headquarters. Pictured: Diego Trucco, LSAM Lead
This coursework later informed a paper on the integration of territorial additives into compostable PLA through robotic large-scale additive manufacturing (LSAM), prepared for the Ibero-American Society for Digital Graphics (SIGraDi) Congress.