Figure 4.

Additive manufacture of fungus-like materials. (a) Design of the wind turbine blade fully made of FLAM. The inner core of the blade, built by additive manufacturing, is designed to allow ventilation and reduce weight. The outer shell is produced by coating the core with a 3 mm layer of FLAM. After drying the outer shell is sanded down to produce a smooth surface. (b) FLAM material is dispensed through a 7 mm diameter nozzle to form beads and then layers of material. The pressure is controlled by a closed loop system between a high-pressure tank (1.2 MPa) supplying material and an auger screw before the nozzle. Hot air is focused on the extruded layer just after deposition to accelerate water evaporation. The printing head is mounted on a 20 kg payload six-axis industrial robotic arm with a stationary horizontal reach radius of 1.65 m (Supplementary Fig. 6). (c) FLAM printing of the layers to support the structure of the wind turbine blade. The blade’s core was printed in two halves, each taking about 1 h and 24 h to dry. The average printing speed is of about 50 mm/s and 2.8 cm³ of FLAM per second (Supplementary Movie 3). Two halves of the inner core are assembled together using FLAM as adhesive agent. (d) The blade is coated by a layer of FLAM manually spread over the inner core. Because the ability of the material to be post processed, imperfections can be removed in post-processing stages. (e) After the outer skin is dried, it is sanded down in two steps of decreasing grit. The 1.2 m blade is estimated to be 50% hollow inside and has a weight of 5.28 kg. (Supplementary Movie 4 and Supplementary Fig. 5).