Soap01™ - The first soap 3D Printer

About this project:

Recycle your old soap and use it as 3D printing material. Create new customised 3D printed soaps.

Soap01 by Wittystore, is an affordable desktop 3D printer, able to recycle old soap or use soap bars as cartridges. Soap cut in little pieces, is melted and mixed with water. Pigments and fragrances are added. The new material is than cooled a bit to a semisolid state and used as 3D printing material.

The top of the printer works as a soap melter. The lower part is where the models are printed.

The principle at the base of our project is simple: "Recycle soap and transform it in something more than a soap, let's say art".

This concept is not new. People already do it at home for fun in two ways: melting and reforming soap scraps and making soap carving. In the soap industry, this idea is not new either and at a production scale we can find machineries called soap plodders, able to extrude long soap bars.

Soap01 is a small machine able to blend, melt, colour, extrude and deposit the soap in order to built with soap a 3D model. One of the challenges with the Soap01 is to reach details. To achieve this our project considered two types of processes additive and subtractive fabrication.

Controlling temperature and hardening time is one of the project critical points. Hot soap in fact, can be very liquid compared to plastic and it needs more time to harden than wax. This fact, complicates things if using a nozzle that draw every soap layer laying material. An alternatively solution we tried is to use the mobile nozzle as a cutter. In both cases the exceeding soap can be recycled again.

Our first prototype is based on material deposition and it works quite well. To increase precision a subtractive additional process could be an other option.

The machine is intended for melting hard soap made with sodium hydroxide (NaOH).

The melted soap is pushed down to a nozzle that can move on xy axis. The nozzle control the soap temperature and deposit the material on a bed that moves on the z axis. The printer at the same time harden the material if too hot and liquid.

A small amount of vaporized alcohol can be added every 2- 3 layers, to help layers stick together.

The project is ongoing and has been launched in Jun 2015.

Please contribute to the development of  this product with a donation or contacting us if you are interested in beeing part of our team.

REWARDS FOR OUR CONTRIBUTORS, BE OUR SPONSOR.

Donating €1 or more we will send you a thank you email.

Donating €5 or more your name and link to your page will be included,under your request,on the project contributors list on our website.

Donating €25 or more your logo 35px x 35px, name and link to your page will be included,under your request,the project contributors list on our website.

Donating €50 or more your logo 75px x 75px, name and link to your page will be included,under your request,on the project contributors list on our website.

Donating €100 or more your logo 150px x 150px, name and link to your page will be included,under your request,the project contributors list on our website.

Donating €500 or more you will receive a soap 3D printed sample kit before printer launch on the market. Your logo 150px x150px, name and link to your page will be included on the project page supporter list on our website.

Donating €1000 or more you will be one of the the first in the world in receiving the printer. Your name and company logo will be included on our project supporter page. You will receive a soap 3D printed sample kit before printer launch on the market. Your logo 300px x 300px, name and link to your page will be included on the project contributors list on our website

WATCH THE VIDEO:

OPEN SOURCE

The soap01 prototype is built upon open source work, including the gshield 3 axis motion hardware, the grbl g-code parser and motion controller, and popular microcontrollers.

Soap01 is meant to accept TinyG code from any CAM program. More info will be disclosed to the public domain on our page.

If interested in actively participate in the project you are free to contact us.

PRICING

It is an open source/hardware project so the printer is theorically free. We would like to keep it affordable. The machine is intended for home use. Possible price range for the WittyStore version may vary from €300 to €500.

Soap 01 (Press and International Recognition):

http://3dprint.com/86207/soap01-soap-3d-printer/

http://www.stampa3dstore.com/soap01-la-stampante-3d-a-sapone/

"MAKE A DONATION AND BECOME OUR SPONSOR"

Please contribute to the development of  this product with a donation or contacting us if you are interested in beeing part of our team.

REWARDS FOR OUR CONTRIBUTORS, BE OUR SPONSOR.

Donating €1 or more we will send you a thank you email.

Donating €5 or more  your name and link to your page will be included, under your request, on the project contributors list on our website.

Donating €25 or more your logo 35px x 35px, name and link to your page will be included, under your request, on the project contributors list on our website.

Donating €50 or more your logo 75px x 75px, name and link to your page will be included, under your request, on the project contributors list on our website.

Donating €100 or more your logo 150px x 150px, name and link to your page will be included, under your request, on the project contributors list on our website.

Donating €500 or more you will receive a soap 3D printed sample kit before printer launch on the market. Your logo 150px x150px, name and link to your page will be included on the project page supporter list on our website.

Donating €2500 or more you will be one of the the first in the world in receiving the printer. Your name and company logo will be included on our project supporter page. You will receive a soap 3D printed sample kit before printer launch on the market. Your logo 300px x 300px, name and link to your page will be included on the project contributors list on our website.