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Lightweight marble and stone are classified as being stone or marble products having a significantly reduced weight, this reduction is facilitated thanks to several specific technologies.
To begin with the thickness of marble or stone slabs is rendered to its possible minimum, after which, suitable support materials are used to reinforce the slabs.
As for our monolithic products such as washbasins and bathtubs the technology and manufacturing are more complex due to the objects being three dimensional. Our innovative patented technology allows us to reduce the weight of our marble or stone products, such as bathtubs and basin, by up to 65%.
When a slab reaches its minimum thickness it becomes lighter in weight but also fragile. Due to this fragility it is connected to a honeycomb shaped panel. This rigid honeycomb panelling is attached to the back of the slab and generally built from aluminium due to its lightweight yet strong properties. Aluminium significantly increases the resistance of the finished product whilst maintaining a low density.
Since weight is often a determining factor in the choice of building materials, both in architecture and furnishing, many techniques to lighten the weight of marble and stone have been developed mainly over the past few years.
The combination of marble or stone slabs with honeycomb aluminium panels is one of these new ingenious techniques.
The honeycomb panel is made up of two external “skins” or “faces” generally formed from fiberglass matting with, at its core, a structure made up of small hexagonal holes. The external panels, or “faces”, distribute the weight whilst the core element increases the rigidity of the structure. These honeycomb panels are therefore ideal at recreating the sturdiness lost when the marble or stone slabs thickness was reduced significantly. The honeycomb panels and slabs are joined together with two-component epoxy glues that guarantee durability and stability over time.
Lightweight marble is a very versatile material allowing us to use it in an architectural context where lightweight materials are needed. A pre-assembled material can facilitate the installation thanks to its holes, hinges and anchoring systems.
In recent years thin lightweight marble slabs have been used for external cladding on buildings with large facades. Thanks to our patented technology, the weight of our monolithic marble products can be reduced by up to 65% which has a significant impact on various economic and practical factors: easier transport and assembly consequently reducing costs, easier to handle thus less risk of breakage when positioning the product.
Extraordinarily one of our marble washbasins, if immersed in water, will float. This lightweight aspect allows us to install a large part of our products on many different tops and furniture even on a crystal top.
Dedalo’s technology offers an added ecological advantage: the foam and materials present in some of our monolithic bathtubs allows for the temperature of the water to stay hotter for longer compared to a normal marble bathtub, this and a beautiful ergonomic design guarantees the maximum level of relaxation whilst bathing. The most important advantage of our technology is that it allows every architect, designer or private client to easily install one of our stone or marble products in places where normally it wouldn’t be possible.
This means not having to sacrifice the rich and expressive beauty of such materials.
Lightweight stone and marble are versatile materials and can be used in all situations where marble is utilized: cladding, stairs, showers, flooring and objects of design. The lightweight marble slabs and our other lightweight products can be used:
Honeycomb is widely used to reinforce flat surfaces. But how can we reduce the weight of a three-dimensional object such as a bathtub of washbasin? Our technique for decreasing weight allows us to reinforce the stone or marble product from the inside using foam and epoxy resin. By using this method we are able to reduce weight of three-dimensional objects, of various shapes and size, by three to five times.
Using this honeycomb technique it is possible to make monolithic bathtubs weighing merely 300kg instead of the standard 1000kg. It also makes it possible to install large marble or stone objects in any place or on any type of furniture or surface.
Our patented Dedalo Stone technology is innovative and radical in today’s world of contemporary furniture. All of our stone and marble products are made from a single block never having glued parts, stuccoed cracks or any other typical signs of recomposed or reassembled marble or granite: this first element already shows the high standard of workmanship and distinguished quality of our products, putting us at the forefront of marble and stone products.
These products are monolithic however not solid stone, this is because the internal stone material inside is removed to leave a 5/7mm thick “skin”. Subsequently, the cavity created is then filled with synthetic foam made up of epoxy resin and glass microspheres. This foam like product is extremely resistant to compression, perfectly adheres to stone, it does not alter the stones colour and being predominantly glass it has mechanic and thermo-mechanic characteristics similar to marble.
All of this translates to a compressive strength similar to solid marble, but above all a change in temperature does not create surface cracks or any internal detachments.
The internal material looks like a ceramic body in which it is possible to make holes or inserts which allow us to, for example, perforate our washbasins and insert two or more steel brackets so they can be cantilevered like normal shelves. Our products made in this way weigh from three to five times less than a similar product made using traditional techniques. This means that for the same size they have a comparable, if not lower, weight than similar ceramic furnishings.
Luxurious furniture in lightweight marble
Dedalo is a company from Carrara that designs and produce monolithic luxurious furnishings in lightened marble, with a contemporary design. Our goal is to reaffirm the use of marble in everyday life without renouncing, for reasons of weight, to its three-dimensional vocation, proposing sculptural and extremely engaging shapes.
