News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
ICON, a construction 3D printing company based out of Austin, Texas, will reportedly be laying off over 100 staff members this March. The firm, which is known for 3D printing housing developments across Texas, stated its intention in a Worker Adjustment & Retraining Notification (WARN) notice filed with the Texas Workforce Commission this week.
There has been significant interest over the years in leveraging 3D printing technologies to manufacture structures on the moon. Key to these investigations has been lunar soil, also known as lunar regolith, the layer of unconsolidated rock that covers the moon’s entire surface that is created by the recurrent impacts of meteoroids and other space particles. Lunar regolith has the potential to be made into a 3D printable construction material, which would enable astronauts to eventually build structures on the moon from local materials (dramatically minimizing the need to transport materials from Earth). One of the projects investigating the use of lunar regolith with 3D printing is Italian initiative GLAMS.
With the acceleration of global warming and other factors like pollution and industrial fishing practices critically destroying and endangering coral reefs and coastal ecosystems around the globe, it has never been more critical to develop solutions that can help to restore these fragile yet incredibly diverse environments. Fortunately, there are people and organizations who have taken up this challenge and are finding creative ways to not only save coral reefs and other coastal environments, but also usher us into a more sustainable, ecologically minded future. One of these organizations is Coastruction, a Dutch startup that is leveraging its own 3D printing technology to build aquatic structures that are designed for a range of restoration purposes, like promoting coral regeneration and wave dissipation.
At Dubai Design Week last month, Japanese architecture firm Mitsubishi Jisho Design presented The Warp, a unique tea house installation made from recycled wood and constructed using extrusion 3D printing. The structure, which is made up of around 900 individual panels, was assembled using a traditional Japanese woodworking joinery technique, which does not require the use of any adhesives, nails or screws.
A 3D printed social housing development in Dubbo, Australia has been making significant progress. The project, which was announced this past summer, is spearheaded by the government of New South Wales and brings on local construction 3D printing company Contour3D, Crete-Tech Australia and Ash Group Holdings, an Aboriginal-owned organization specialized in sustainable housing.
Researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno are working on a project that could enable the US Army to quickly produce infrastructure – such as buildings or bridges – in forward-deployment missions without relying on traditional building materials. The approach involves 3D printing concrete structures on site – eliminating the need to ship full-scale buildings or materials into challenging environments, including conflict zones.
Harcourt Technologies Ltd (HTL.tech), a construction 3D printing technology company in Ireland and the UK, has achieved a groundbreaking milestone by constructing Europe’s first social housing project compliant with the ISO/ASTM 52939:2023 additive manufacturing standard, adopted by Ireland. Using COBOD’s BOD2 3D construction printer, HTL.tech showcased how 3D construction printing can meet housing demands efficiently while adhering to rigorous safety and performance standards.
In the late 15th century, polymath Leonardo Da Vinci drafted the first designs for a self-supporting bridge. Six centuries later and the bridge is still one of the most significant architectural inventions of human history. Recently, Da Vinci’s self-supporting bridge has inspired a project at the Polytechnic University of Bari, where a team in the ArCoD department led by Professor Giuseppe Fallacara, has partnered with 3D printing company WASP and stone processing specialists to create a 3D printed self-supporting bridge. The bridge, suitably named “Da Vinci’s Bridge”, has progressed in its development with a finished prototype.
Thousands of people experience homelessness every year in Austin, Texas. Fortunately, there are efforts underway to support these people by—as simple as it sounds—building housing for them. As part of this effort, construction 3D printing company ICON is once again teaming up with Mobile Loaves & Fishes, a local nonprofit that that has dedicated itself to supporting the Austin homeless community for nearly three decades, to build 100 more 3D printed homes in the Community First! Village.
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a 3D concrete printing method that captures carbon, demonstrating a new pathway to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry.