A 3D-Printed Foam Shell Turned a Tiny Piaggio Ape Into a Camper Ready for Nordkapp

The Smallest Camper on the Longest Road

Francesco Furlani has driven a three-wheeled Piaggio Ape TM 703 from Italy to Nordkapp, Norway. The tiny vehicle wore a camper body built almost entirely through large-format 3D printing. The shell weighs just 70kg, a sharp drop from the roughly 200kg a conventional build would have added.

The project is a collaboration between Nugae, an Italian large-format 3D printing firm, and DCab, a vehicle programming specialist. Nugae supplied the material and the printed shell. DCab adapted the geometry to the Ape's frame, working out mounting points, weight distribution, and mechanical compatibility so the printed body would work as a real load-bearing structure.

How They Dropped the Weight

Nugae calls the process UL-LFAM, for Ultra-Light Large Format Additive Manufacturing. It combines a foamed polymer called CoreLight3D with a patented extruder, six-axis robots, and proprietary reinforcement and slicing software. The result is hollow or ribbed structures that put material only where loads actually land.

The parts come off the printer as structural semi-finished pieces, not finished surfaces. They are then laminated, bonded, finished, and painted. For the Ape camper, the shell was printed on a NU-Print Large machine and designed to handle road vibration, weather, and the structural loads of daily driving.

Why This Matters

Large-format 3D printing for vehicles has always faced the same tension: saving weight usually means losing stiffness, sealing, or durability. Nugae argues that CoreLight3D avoids that trade-off by pairing a lightweight foam with engineering around load paths. The Ape project is the proof: a real road trip across Europe in a printed body that had to survive rain, wind, and highway speeds.

It is also a good example of collaboration. Nugae handled the material and manufacturing method, while DCab made sure the shell could function as a vehicle body rather than a shelter simply bolted to a chassis. Furlani, who drove the route, credited that partnership for making the trip possible.

Context

The idea of 3D printing camper bodies is not new. In 2018, Create Cafe printed a 13-foot trailer called The Wave as a single seamless PETG piece. More recently, Buckley Conversions used large-format printing to build a Mercedes-Benz eSprinter interior that was roughly 680kg lighter than a traditional plywood and aluminum fit-out. Nugae's Ape camper pushes the same idea onto one of the smallest, most weight-sensitive platforms on the road.

The takeaway is practical: large-format printing is moving from show vehicles toward real, drivable structures. If a printed camper shell can survive a 4,000 kilometer trip behind a 50km/h trike, the method has passed a tougher test than any trade show demo.