Was watching a show with wasps building a nest. They ‘eat’ cellulose(wood) and then spit it out (I guess) to build nests.
Couldn’t we build a printer the grinds up wood chips and then adds
water/enzymes to create a paste like material to print stuff out of paper.
Just stuff cloggin’ my head.
Or like termites, we could make a printer that mixes dirt and water to print stuff with.
I saw a demo of the Airwolf 3D printer where they had a wood impregnated plastic sample.
I’ve seen that filament. I’m suggesting a print with a different type of toolhead that would mix the cellulose/wood with liquid, maybe even grind the wood too, and deposit it on the bed layer by layer and build stuff out of paper.
Yeah, that would be way cool. If were able to adjust the grain output of the mixture, imagine the stuff that could be built. It would bring in a whole slew of artisans into 3D printing. Oy, the furniture.
Remembered what the print-half looks like using paper. Saw this paper based 3D printed head at the Burbank/Hollywood 3Dprint Expo couple weeks ago. Looks amazing, though the thought of dropping a ream of processed printer paper into the machine to chew through gives me pause. Your biomimetic wasp example sounds much much better.
It’s like they are living 3d printers. I’m not sure the detail would be great but might be useful in the bio-printing realm.
Absolutely amazing. Nothing is wasted.
I guess some sort of pencil-sharpener sort of tool, but maybe more grindy that shavey. (don’t you just love my tech jargin :D). Then feeds into a chamber mixes with the liquid/enzymes and out the nozzle and onto the bed.
The paper type material wasps produce is very delicate. Using an epoxy or pla as a binder might be worth looking at.
Wow can’t even find close-ups of wasp mouth parts to get an idea of how the grinder might look/work. Maybe something like a cutter/grinder like molars.
I remember as a kid I would hear odd rasping noises out side barely audible and found that it was wasps chewing on dead, dried up branches of poinsettias > https://www.google.com/search?q=paper+wasp+mouth+microscopic+image&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=wP__Uvv2EOnP0wGJg4HgCQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoATgU&biw=1366&bih=679&dpr=1#q=poinsettia&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch < . Then they would use that to build their nests.
The wood chips are pushed through a grinder. Maybe 2 or more descending cone-shaped chambers with cones with uni-directional teeth that grab the material and rub it against the rough walls. The material falls into next chamber and through the finer grinder and so on through the 2 or 3 chambers. The center cones are rotated back and forth 180* with teeth in opposing directions.
Then the ground up wood mixes with the liquid. Or it mixes in the last grinding chamber.
Sorry if I’m blabbing to much.
Not at all. Brainstorming is generally a bit “stream-of-consciousness.” I flesh out my ideas that way, too. 
And its nice to get feedback, so group brainstorming is a good idea.
So @djC653 you’re kinda making sawdust with those cone shaped chambers. I wonder if you were to actually dump sawdust into such a machine, could that material be routed around the grinding chambers based on its size?
@Lydia_S I co-founded an employee driven brainstorming co-op at my job, what you say is so true. We have generated 60 patents in 60 months with carefully moderated group stream of consciousness techniques.
Wow!
@Anthony_Blow Yes you could start with sawdust. And each chamber would be smaller than the previous one and/or the spacing between the cones and walls would be smaller. The “teeth” might take on a different shape in the 2nd and third chambers. More like grinding molars than sharp edged shapes for cutting up the material.