{"id":14382,"date":"2020-09-24T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T16:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/?p=14382"},"modified":"2024-03-18T18:32:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T01:32:57","slug":"coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/","title":{"rendered":"Coral Maker is Saving Coral Reefs With Additive and Traditional Manufacturing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"healthy-coral-reef\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When many people hear \u201ccoral reef,\u201d they picture a rainbow array of creatures coexisting on the ocean floor, snorkeling on vacation, and perhaps even the ever-optimistic Finding Nemo<\/a>. However, the stark reality is that because of climate change, many of the Earth\u2019s reefs are starting to look more like uninhabited ghost towns due to a process called coral bleaching<\/a>. Coral bleaching occurs when warming ocean temperatures affect a coral\u2019s biology, causing it to go into a high state of stress and turn white, eventually dying altogether.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"coral-bleaching\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, this monochrome display has its own unique, spooky beauty to it, but it certainly isn\u2019t healthy for our planet. \u201cCoral reefs are incredibly biodiverse and important ecologically,\u201d explains Taryn Foster, Founder of Coral Maker. \u201cTheir structure also protects our coastlines, providing a barrier to storms and coastal erosion<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coral Maker<\/span><\/a> is an Australian company that is taking a new, accelerated approach to restoring coral reefs. Foster, a coral biologist and avid diver, began to think about how she could use her research background to actively restore reefs when she started to connect the dots between her scientific experience and her family business. Her family works in the masonry manufacturing industry, and they own machinery that makes limestone blocks and other products for the construction industry. Then came the lightbulb moment: what if these machines could be used to rapidly make safe skeletons for corals to inhabit?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"brick-machine\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Through a Fulbright Fellowship<\/a> at the California Academy of Sciences, Foster moved to San Francisco. She then applied to the Autodesk Technology Center\u2019s residency program<\/a> at Pier 9 in San Francisco<\/a> in hopes that she could pursue this idea further. Once accepted, Foster hit the ground running, working with a team of Autodesk support members through the Autodesk Foundation<\/a> from various backgrounds like robotics<\/a>, manufacturing<\/a>, and architecture.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"coral-maker-fusion-360-cad-model\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The team designed and modeled<\/a> the actual coral component in Fusion 360<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re working across four vastly different time zones, so Fusion 360\u2019s cloud platform<\/a> has enabled us to collaborate<\/a> on the same designs and access the same data,\u201d explains Robert Bowerman, Technical Consultant at Autodesk. \u201cA lot of the work we’ve done has been making conceptual models, 3D printing prototypes<\/a> and making videos so that Taryn can simply go out and tell people about this problem and the solutions that we’re coming out with.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The typical coral restoration process<\/a> involves cutting a little piece of live coral from an existing colony, then allowing that piece to grow its own skeleton and eventually grow into a bigger colony. The issue with this process is time\u2014coral naturally grows very slowly (think 3-10  years before a piece grows its own adult-sized skeleton). In order to speed up the process, Coral Maker provides these tiny coral pieces with premade calcium carbonate skeletons. Once the skeleton CAD<\/a> was complete, the team employed 3D printing<\/a> to quickly create prototypes before manufacturing. \u201cTo actually make a real impact, you need to be planting millions of corals each year,\u201d explains Bowerman. And that\u2019s exactly what Coral Maker\u2019s process is capable of doing through a mixture of additive<\/a> and traditional manufacturing techniques.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"coral-maker-3d-printed-prototype\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the most interesting aspects of Coral Maker\u2019s process is that the Foster family\u2019s machinery is pretty standard\u2014it\u2019s a traditional brick making machine that is available all around the world. This means that, unlike previous processes, Coral Maker\u2019s process can be deployed anywhere facing coral bleaching, such as the Philippines<\/a> or Indonesia<\/a>. \u201cWe really considered how we could apply traditional manufacturing techniques or automation<\/a> to try and achieve that scale,\u201d says Bowerman. \u201cMy input has been around designing the product so that it’s suitable for the process but also giving advice on how we can design the tooling to actually make this product using the masonry machine machine. I tried to apply what I know from industries that do achieve scale, like the automotive<\/a> industry, and apply it to this problem that has never been solved before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"coral-maker-robotics-system\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s next for Coral Maker? They\u2019re currently working on a robotic system that will automate the process of planting live corals in the skeletons. They\u2019re hoping other parts of the industry will be able to scale up as well. \u201cOur next bottlenecks are going to be around scaling the supply of live coral, as well as scaling deployment to the reef,\u201d Foster notes. \u201cSo there are other problems to solve, but this is about solving one problem that will make it possible for other parts of the industry to scale what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep up with Coral Maker\u2019s journey over on their <\/span>website<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>social media,<\/span><\/a> and download Fusion 360 today to see how it can improve your workflow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"download-fusion-360\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Australian company is working on a way to create millions of coral skeletons per year to help restore coral reefs at scale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4033,"featured_media":14391,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[406,478],"tags":[34,143],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-stories","category-case-studies","tag-customer-stories","tag-manufacturing","dhig-theme--light"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCoral Maker is Saving Coral Reefs With Additive and Traditional Manufacturing - Fusion Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Coral Maker is currently working on a way to create millions of coral skeletons per year to help restore coral reefs at scale.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Coral Maker is Saving Coral Reefs With Additive and Traditional Manufacturing - Fusion Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Coral Maker is currently working on a way to create millions of coral skeletons per year to help restore coral reefs at scale.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fusion Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-09-24T16:00:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-03-19T01:32:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-15-at-9.52.40-AM.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2838\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Emily Suzuki\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Emily Suzuki\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Coral Maker is Saving Coral Reefs With Additive and Traditional Manufacturing - Fusion Blog","description":"Coral Maker is currently working on a way to create millions of coral skeletons per year to help restore coral reefs at scale.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Coral Maker is Saving Coral Reefs With Additive and Traditional Manufacturing - Fusion Blog","og_description":"Coral Maker is currently working on a way to create millions of coral skeletons per year to help restore coral reefs at scale.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/","og_site_name":"Fusion Blog","article_published_time":"2020-09-24T16:00:33+00:00","article_modified_time":"2024-03-19T01:32:57+00:00","og_image":[{"width":2838,"height":1576,"url":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-15-at-9.52.40-AM.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Emily Suzuki","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Emily Suzuki","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/"},"author":{"name":"Emily Suzuki","@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5dc597b1665ac01ddfdf98c0a230b674"},"headline":"Coral Maker is Saving Coral Reefs With Additive and Traditional Manufacturing","datePublished":"2020-09-24T16:00:33+00:00","dateModified":"2024-03-19T01:32:57+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/"},"wordCount":801,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-15-at-9.52.40-AM.png","keywords":["Customer Stories","manufacturing"],"articleSection":["Customer Stories","Case Studies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/","url":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/","name":"Coral Maker is Saving Coral Reefs With Additive and Traditional Manufacturing - Fusion Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-15-at-9.52.40-AM.png","datePublished":"2020-09-24T16:00:33+00:00","dateModified":"2024-03-19T01:32:57+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5dc597b1665ac01ddfdf98c0a230b674"},"description":"Coral Maker is currently working on a way to create millions of coral skeletons per year to help restore coral reefs at scale.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-15-at-9.52.40-AM.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-15-at-9.52.40-AM.png","width":2838,"height":1576,"caption":"coral-maker-robotics-system"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/coral-maker-is-saving-coral-reefs-with-additive-and-traditional-manufacturing\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Coral Maker is Saving Coral Reefs With Additive and Traditional Manufacturing"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/","name":"Fusion Blog","description":"Product updates, tips, tutorials and community news.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5dc597b1665ac01ddfdf98c0a230b674","name":"Emily Suzuki","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/powerpoint-headshot-150x150.jpgf3f6ce43b8bd98a1ccf2099494b77fb8","url":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/powerpoint-headshot-150x150.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/powerpoint-headshot-150x150.jpg","caption":"Emily Suzuki"},"description":"Emily Suzuki is a global Content Manager at Autodesk. She's passionate about turning complex ideas into digestible, engaging content and shedding light on the often-overlooked design process.","url":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/author\/emily-engle\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4033"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14382"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}