Meet The Team That’s Making The Furniture Business Circular

By taking advantage of the latest advances in 3D printing technology in its partnership with 3D Systems Corporation , furniture maker Model No. is beginning to scale its circular furnishings and fittings business.

In producing its high-end residential and workspace furniture and lighting products, Model No. uses its materials and manufacturing processes to cut waste in both the making and eventual disposal of its pieces. The company has pioneered the use of reclaimed and eco-friendly materials and the re-use of what was previously scrap to eliminate waste at all stages of its products' life cycles.

"We've got a product which we make using either biodegradable or compostable materials," said Model No. CEO Phillip Raub. "And [it] has a really unique kind of look and feel to it, and that's where we focus. We are now getting to a point where we're scaling with what we can do and the scale of our output."

The company was founded in 2018 with the idea of using 3D printing to create sustainable furniture, with the belief that large-format 3D printing could offer the means of production they needed. However, not finding the right solutions with the technology that was commercially available at the time, the company went its own way. "Originally when the company was started we were building our own 3D printers," Raub explained. "I think we did an admirable job of doing it, but it wasn't scalable. Fortunately, there were companies out there like Titan Robotics, now 3D Systems, who offered us a product that I think was better than what we had. That allowed us to deliver on the vision that we have."

That partnership with 3D Systems allowed the company to focus on product rather than process, and they're on the cusp of scaling to full production now, thanks to advances in technology. "I think there's tremendous progress that has happened in the last ten or twenty years in terms of hardware, software and materials, and I think that's what's bringing it together," said Rahul Kasat, VP at 3D Systems. "And then of course we need people like Phillip. He was one of my first customers using Titan printers in the furniture application. If you had said that ten years ago, people would have said, 'There's no freaking way you're going to make 3D-printed chairs.'

"We're seeing the next phase of 3D printing, which is really getting into production, and it could be a thousand individual parts, or it could be one part made a thousand times," he added. "I think we're now starting to break those boundaries for 3D printing."

Those technological advances have now positioned Model No. to deliver its sustainable furniture offerings at scale. "One of the materials we use today that's a biodegradable material is cellu-acetate," said Raub. "In printing with that, when you look at the prints and how clean they come off, it almost looks like it's injection molded."

Everything Model No. produces is made to order and printed on demand. That allows the company to hold no inventory, further reducing its environmental footprint. Overall, Model No. says its operating model reduces waste by 90% and cuts carbon emissions by 50% over standard methods. Their eventual goal is to achieve the complete elimination of waste from the production process.

"Additive manufacturing just about eliminates the waste of other manufacturing processes," said Cory Bonnet, a Pittsburgh-based artist and LEED AP-certified sustainability expert. "The idea of not just minimizing waste but getting to zero waste, that's the way go. They're using renewable energy to power their facilities. I think that's becoming way more common as people have focused on long-run cost savings in reduced energy costs."

There's still work to do to get to zero waste, however, with both the products and customer tastes. "From a consumer perspective, I think doing something that's 100% 3D printed, it takes time," said Raub. "You have to kind of build that familiarity. We do add some wood elements and some upholstered pieces to soften them up. We use all salvaged or reclaimed wood, but when we do, we take the sawdust and we can actually mix that back into the polymers and then it creates kind of a wood print. This whole idea of this kind of regenerative or recycled thought process is in everything that we do."

Meanwhile, it's not lost on Model No. that people must find their offerings attractive. "Ultimately, it doesn't matter how cool the process and the manufacturing [are]," Raub said. "You ultimately have to have a well-designed product that people desire and want."

For Bonnet, they've accomplished that. "They're beautiful. I'm thinking how cool it would be to do large 3D-printed sculptures straight from a design. It adds a layer of marketability–you can do large-scale dynamic shapes you couldn't do otherwise."