Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM): An innovative technique aimed at reusing Lecce stone waste for industrial design and building applications

Lecce Stone is an attractive and appreciated natural material, as well as a non-renewable resource. For thousands of years people have extracted it from the Salento quarries for use as an ornamental, celebrative or building material. The production chain of this stone, from extraction through to the finished product, results in a great deal of scraps produced in both solid and muddy form. In recent decades a new attitude toward stone scraps has gradually taken hold, namely an eco-design approach. Already adopted by some companies, it consists of reusing industrial scraps to produce innovative manufacturing products. Nowadays, in fact, only a small percentage of Lecce Stone (LS) scraps is recycled and used as raw material in other fields, while a significant portion is taken to the landfill, as in the case of the scraps produced in laboratories by Apulian artisans. The aim of this paper is to design a novel composite biomaterial, based on Polylactic acid (PLA) and Lecce Stone (LS) scraps and verify its suitability for use by designers to produce original industrial and building products, thereby obtaining environmental advantages through this new practice, based on the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technique.