News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Yes, we write about 3D printing but we are by no means obligated to only write about 3D printing. We can just as easily cover competing, synergistic or similar technological approaches. Especially when they are as fascinating as the LightVault created by Princeton researchers using robots to deposit glass bricks. And who’s to say that bricklaying is not an additive process anyways?
It’s no longer a secret – if you’ve been following this website – that concrete 3D printing is skyrocketing. As further proof, the technology is now expanding beyond construction, into decorative products and even pranks. Video creator and technology reviewer Jerry Rig Everything turned to Pikus Concrete, developers of a concrete 3D printing system, to play the coolest prank on his best friend, who had recently moved away. How? with a 3D printed statue of himself, of course.
ASU Professor Narayanan Neithalath and four colleagues have been awarded the $2 million 3DConcrete grant from the National Science Foundation to foster collaboration around concrete 3D printing research across more than a dozen countries. Construction 3D printing technology generated these examples shown with Sooraj Nair, a doctoral student in Neithalath’s lab group. The technique offers the potential to change the nature of construction.
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.
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.
Italian design firm Barberio Colella Architetti and architect Angelo Figliola proposed a project c ...
Dutch construction design firm Studio RAP has been 3D printing ceramic tiles for their work on design elements of the pioneering New Delft Blue project in the historic Dutch city of Delft. After printing these tests at Studio RAP’s workshop, the tiles went straight into the kiln at Koninklijke Tichelaar where they were also beautifully glazed.