While SPAM did not exist until after the Decathlon it was the reason for our founding so we figured we should share with you the project as a whole and what we specifically did for it!

The competition consists of 10 categories. We were scored based on our electricity use, our comfortability levels (heating and cooling), our design, our engineering, and more. The process of designing, building, and presenting the house took two years. And throughout that time many goals changed and many teams shifted duties.

It was my job as team leader for the 3D printing team to find a way to innovatively introduce 3D printing into the household. This is where our team comes in.

The walls are paneled with chalkboard laminate from 3M and we completely furnished the room for an optimized 3D printing work space. All the plastic objects in the photos above were printed by our team and we spent many many hours prepping and building this room for the house from the ground up (with help from the other 50+ members of Team Orange County)

This room was the beginning of our drive to do further research. The room was a demonstration of how 3D printing can be integrated into the household and how we can make sustainable design and printing a reality today! From this room we came away with multiple goals:

1. Demonstrate that a closed loop plastic cycle is completely doable with technology already on the market
2. Further showcase that the technology used can be powered in a sustainable way (through solar, wind or…bike power perhaps)
3. Finally develop a workflow with the technology that allows a broader user base to interact with the design, printing, and recycling of the plastics.

We know we have some hard work ahead of us here at SPAM but we know that we can get it done!

Thank you for reading.