News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Apis Cor, the parent company of a Skolkovo resident startup that uses 3D printing to construct buildings, has raised about $6 million in investment from the Rusnano Sistema Sicar venture fund, the Vedomosti newspaper reported Thursday. Apis Cor made headlines and received global media coverage for its efficient and scalable construction 3D printing business.
With close to a third of the bridge printed, Dutch design studios MX3D are well on track to be finished printing in early 2018 as programmed (see timeline below). By now, the company working on the bridge designed by Joris Laarman also mounted a robot directly on the bridge. Unlike so many high-profile 3D printing projects that clash with physical impossibilities, the first generatively designed, metal 3D printed bridge looks like it is going to become reality (and no, you cannot buy it).
The Construction Engineering Research Laboratory in Champaign, Illinois, has successfully three-dimensionally printed a 512 square-foot concrete structure. The structure, called a barracks hut or B-Hut, was printed as a result of a three year Army Program called ACES, “Automated Construction of Expeditionary Structures.” It uses an additive manufacturing process to “print” semi-permanent structures in a theater of operation. The ability to use concrete sourced from readily available materials reduces logistical requirements for the U.S. Army.
As reported by just about every Chinese 3D printing media, a bridge in the Chinese city of Nanjing was just completed with 3D printed railings, drastically reducing time and costs required for construction. According to an article on 3D Printing World, the railings were built by Nanjing Jiayi Precision Machinery Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
Coralise is a project by Jessica Gregory which aims to irradiate juvenile coral mortality (99%). The substrates are a unique ceramic material made of calcium carbonate from coral skeletons. This, along with its carefully designed organic form, attracts the coral larvae.
NASA has awarded a total of $201,023 to teams of citizen inventors that have reached the latest milestone of NASA’s 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, completing the Phase 2: Level 2 Beam Member competition. The teams are working to find ways to 3D print habitation structures using recyclables and simulated Martian soil, a technology goal that could support deep space exploration and advance construction capabilities on Earth.
For this level, which is the second of three sub-competitions within Phase 2, teams had to 3 ...
At the Empa and Eawag NEST building in Dübendorf, eight ETH Zurich professors are collaborating with business partners to build the three-storey DFAB HOUSE. It is the first house in the world to be designed, planned and built using predominantly digital processes. Since one could argue that all building construction is based on additive processes – even the human driven analogic ones of today – than this is as close as it gets to the future of additively manufactured houses.
Contour Crafting Corporation from the US is poised and ready to start series production of first-generation deployable robotic 3D construction printers. The man behind the high-tech company is the pioneering inventor of this technology, Behrokh Khoshnevis. who has partnered with Doka Ventures, a subsidiary of the Austrian Umdasch Group from Amstetten.
Thai artist and designer Anon Pairot has designed an outdoor terrace consisting of 3D printed concrete furniture and decorations. Thailand’s Siam Cement Group provided its 3D printable SCG cement formula for the project.