News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
An interdisciplinary team at Penn State University was recently awarded a $50,000 grant from the College of Engineering’s Engineering for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ENGINE) program, along with additional $25,000 from the College of Arts and Architecture, to pursue a concrete 3D printing project.
After much planning and testing, construction 3D printing company COBOD is ready to ship its BOD2 3D printer to Elite for Construction & Development Co. in Saudi Arabia. The massive 3D construction printer, reportedly the largest in the world, has a build capacity of 12 x 27 x 9 meters, or 300 square meters per storey.
New York-based 3D printing firm S-Squared 3D Printers Inc. (SQ3D) says it has completed construction of the largest 3D printed home in the world using its Autonomous Robotic Construction System (ARCS). The 3D printed building spans 500 ft² and reportedly took under 12 hours to complete.
GXN Innovation, an independent research company created by Danish architecture firm 3XN released its future vision for autonomous 3D printers. In this latest conceptual experiment involving additive manufacturing – part of the “Break the Grid” project – the firm was supported by the Dansk AM Hub, a government-supported Denmark’s platform that supports experimentation in additive manufacturing, and by MAP Architects. The result is swarms flying and diving 3D printing extrusion systems that can work autonomously to build and repair complex structures on land and in the sea.
Emaar Properties, a Dubai-based real estate developer, is reportedly planning to construct a 3D printed home in the UAE city. The project will mark Emaar’s first foray into 3D printed housing and its first step towards becoming a “leading adopter of advanced construction technologies.”
A collaboration between Digital Building Technologies and the Origen Festival in Riom, Switzerland, the installation Concrete Choreography consists of nine, individually designed, 2.7m tall columns. Each column is concrete 3D printed at full height in 2.5 hours with the process developed at ETH Zurich with the support of NCCR DFAB.
Inspired by its successful run in the NASA 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, AI SpaceFactory has decided to apply its construction 3D printing know-how to develop an eco-friendly home here on Earth. The sustainable housing project, called TERA, will be built in the heart of nature, just a couple of hours outside of New York City.
VINCI Construction, a France-based construction leader, is launching a new company focused on 3D printing high-performance concrete materials through its subsidiary Freyssinet. The company, called Concreative, offers a fully integrated service, providing support from early design stages to on-site installation.
CyBe Construction, a Dutch specialist in concrete 3D printing, has been selected as the technology provider for a 3D printed house project in the UAE. The house will be built as part of the Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park (SRTI Park) initiative which aims to 3D print a series of buildings in the area with the goal of transforming the city of Sharjah into an architectural hub.
Throughout history, many Italian geniuses did not reap the benefits of their inventions. Just think of Galileo, excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church for having understood the motion of planets. Or more recently Meucci who invented the telephone only to have Graham Bell obtain the patent and build an empire with it. Many great visionaries had to leave Italy — and continue to have to leave Italy — to find someone willing to finance their ventures, starting with Columbus, who turned to the queen of Spain in order to set sail on the voyage that would lead to the Americas. The story of Enrico Dini, the man who invented the idea of 3D printing concrete houses by binder jetting, is in many ways a modern version of these: a modern odyssey for the future of construction, one that shares some similarities with these great stories.