Shimizu Corporation develops spray-based 3D concrete printing Construction 3D Printing
Shimizu Corporation, a Japanese construction, architecture, and engineering firm established in 1804, has developed a spray-based 3D concrete printing system designed for the construction of large, curved reinforced components. The system integrates a nine-degree-of-freedom gantry robot with a material spray simulator that enables verification of sprayed-material behavior in advance. This enables highly accurate, automated fabrication of reinforced structural components and large components with complex geometries, applications that were difficult to realize using conventional material extrusion printing. The material spray simulator incorporated into the system was jointly developed with the Computational Engineering and Robotics Lab (CERLAB), led by Professor Kenji Shimada of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.