B1, Group B - Bryan Cummings

Building construction technologies are currently slow, labor-intensive, and expensive compared to other manufacturing fields.  3D printing technologies have made great advances in recent years in printing small objects, prosthetics, and even machine parts.  These items can be made much faster, at a lower cost, and with a higher degree of customizability compared to traditional manufacturing methods.  Currently, technologies are emerging to be able to print habitable buildings and other large municipal structures.  This should provide the construction industry with the same benefits as 3D printing has brought other manufacturing fields, reducing the need and cost of labor, speeding up construction time, and allowing architects to feasibly design more complex forms.

Structural 3D printing is still in its infancy.  Traditional printing methods have involved layering a plastic resin to construct the object, which won’t do for usable structures.  A company in China, WinSun, has pioneered printing homes and apartments from concrete.  The system operates on the same premise as conventional 3D printing.  Layers of wet concrete are laid on top of the previous.  The concrete properties must be very well controlled for the printing to form properly.  This company printed 10 small single-story homes, for a cost of approximately $5000 each.  The printing machine was 10m x 6.6m [1].  A research team at Berkeley has also been investigating 3D printed cement structures, but from a different angle.  Their technology prints the forms from a dry cement powder, each layer upon which water is sprayed to harden the structure.  This yields the ability to produce very precise forms, as seen by their recently printed pavilion named Bloom.  Another benefit of this method, compared to layering wet cement, aside from form, is that the structures can be lighter and the construction process produces less weight. [2]

In addition to printing concrete and cement, metal printing technologies are also being researched for structures.  The company MX3D is on their way 3D printing a steel bridge on-site across a canal in Amsterdam.  Their technology, instead of using a stand-alone printers as the previous parties mentioned do, utilizes printing machines that attach to the structure they are printing, and can move along it as more progress is made—analogous to how, in contemporary high-rise construction, internal climbing cranes hoist themselves up on the building’s existing structure.  This technology makes printing much more versatile as it can be done outside of a controlled environment, the final product is less size-limited, and can be built directly to fit into its final location, opposed to cookie-cutter type designs as WinSun created.  Their metallic printing is done by applying weld piece by piece directly to the existing structure to extend the members.  This video showcases the intended design as well as the construction and completion of a physical prototype, which illustrates well how this technology prints a metal structure (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZNTzkAR1Ho). [3]

BIM is an essential component to any 3D printing technology.  The printer is fed information from a software with information on scale, shape, color, and other properties of the final product.  This can’t be done with simple CAD programs which are only drawings and not models.  As the 3D printing advances to construct more complex and complete structures, or whole buildings (which is a system of countless other systems), rather than printing homogeneous objects as is traditionally done today, the role of BIM will play an even more crucial part in the realization of 3D printing structures.  

Farther in the future, a possible application of 3D printing structures beyond being a means to increase the efficiency of the construction industry could be construction in inhospitable environments—one of which being construction in orbit or on the moon.  Foster + Partners and the ESA (European Space Agency) are conducting a feasibility study into constructing a lunar base on the moon via 3D printing.  This technology would mix lunar material with what they call “binding salt” to produce the main structural material—probably similar to cement.  Constructing this out of local material already on the moon would dramatically reduce the construction cost of such a structure.  The main structural element would be the intrinsically structurally efficient catenary arch, which a pneumatic structure to shield the occupants from radiation and micrometeors. [4]

[1]       http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27156775

[2]       http://www.gizmag.com/berkeley-researchers-pioneer-powder-based-concrete-3d-printing/36515/

[3]       http://www.fastcodesign.com/3047350/this-robot-can-3-d-print-a-steel-bridge-in-mid-air

[4] http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Building_a_lunar_base_with_3D_printing


Comments:

Comment to Dianna Vogel:  We came to similar conclusions about most topics here.  It was interesting reading about the house in Amsterdam milled out of plywood.   Also, so often reduced cost is discussed with relation to 3D printing, but I like how you mentioned a reduced environmental impact as well.  I’d be really interested in doing a life cycle assessment on 3D printed construction compared to conventional construction.  Transportation of materials would probably have a lower ecological footprint as they would be in a more compact form compared to how finished steel beams are often transported one or few beam(s) per truck.  Printing’s ability to create stronger structures with less material will also contribute to a reduced impact.  I’m interested, though, about the plywood house in Amsterdam, since that is milled, not printed, what happens to the plywood that gets cut and not used?  Can it be reused or recycled?

Comment to Danielle Schroeder:  I looked into the PaperBridge topic you discussed—very interesting and gorgeous!  I know it is intended for art and not much else, but it still raises the question of what, if any, applicability might this have on the built environment?  My first thought was how durable is it to weathering?  Obviously it has withstood rain events, but is the structural integrity decreased each time?  How long would it last if it wasn’t scheduled to be taken down?  I also can’t imagine it’s a very efficient means of creating a bridge.  It’s extremely material-dense for such a small structure, so my first concern is a worse than necessary ecological footprint.  Still, it was great that they thought to use ink that won’t run and subsequently pollute the stream the bridge crosses.