News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Twente Additive Manufacturing is a 3D printed concrete startup with a presence in the Netherlands and Canada. They sell a range of concrete printers and also print on demand for projects that make sense logistically. TAM’s next high profile construction 3D printing project is the Fibonacci House.
LafargeHolcim is calling on the world’s brightest students to reinvent the building industry, along with its partner Witteveen+Bos, a Dutch engineering and consultancy firm and with the support of COBOD and Ecole des Ponts. Students in engineering, architecture, and material science are encouraged to join in a construction 3D printing hackathon to pioneer new solutions, leveraging concrete 3D printing technology for more effective and efficient housing construction.
TÜV SÜD has performed its first combined audit in the field of additive manufacturing (AM) for Sauber Engineering AG, a company specializing in the development of innovative methods and manufacture of high-quality components. This audit has now resulted in the issue of two certificates, ISO 9001 and DIN SPEC 17071 for metal and plastics production.
Voxeljet, a German leader in large format 3D printing, received three more orders for its high-speed VJET X 3D printers: 1 VJET X unit order was placed in August 2020, and two more units were ordered in September 2020. This brings the total to five units installed for metal automotive part production.
BMW Group is now ready to enter a new era for its EV range, by introducing the new BMW iX. Conceived from the outset for purely electric mobility, the iX sees BMW redefining the successful Sports Activity Vehicle (SAV) concept, initially presented two years ago with the iNEXT project. A defining characteristic of the iX/iNEXT is the front grille, which will house sensors and electronic connectors and is vital for highly-automated driving. It allows the integration of camera technology, radar functions and further sensors required for highly developed driver assistance systems into the front end of the vehicle. The original prototype of the grille was, of course, 3D printed, as we revealed back when the project was originally announced. Will the production of the grille component also involve additive manufacturing?
FCA and Fraunhofer IAPT (Research Institution for Additive Manufacturing Technologies) collaborated on a 3D printed wheel carrier with an integrated brake caliper for an FCA sports car.
On the occasion of World Science Day, LafargeHolcim signed a new partnership with Southeast University in Nanjing, China, where it is sponsoring research into concrete and mortars for on-site construction 3D printing. Leading the way in green building solutions, LafargeHolcim is using 3D printing to make construction more efficient while lowering its carbon footprint, aiming to become a full 3D printing solutions provider.
The Digital Bamboo pavilion explores the innovative combination of a naturally grown material with digital fabrication. It was developed via a collaboration between the Swiss university ETH and Korean firm HS HI-TECH, combining natural bamboo, extruded recycled thermoplastics on textiles, multijet fusion and metal powder bed fusion processes. Mostly, though, the project combined know-hows in hybrid digital constructions.
Concre3DLab, a research institute embedded within the Department of Structural Engineering (Ghent University) just released VoxelPrint, a new Grasshopper plug-in for voxel-based numerical simulation of concrete printing.
Since Danish construction company COBOD spun out of 3D Printhuset in 2018, it has made steady advances in pushing construction AM towards the mainstream. In the past year alone, its gantry AM technology has been used for a handful of large-scale projects, including building over three demo houses at the the International Bautec construction exhibition and printing a residential building in Beckum, Germany. Most recently, COBOD’s technology is being used to construct a three-floor apartment building.