News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
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.
The UK’s largest 3D printed master plan model has been unveiled at Barking Riverside, one of Europe’s largest Brownfield developments – which will deliver over 10,800 new homes in East London.
Seven teams working on technology that could someday be used to create habitats from materials on other worlds have completed the first printing segment of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. NASA has awarded $100,000 to the two top-scoring teams from this stage, the Phase 2: Level 1 Compression Test Competition. Point-based awards were made to Foster + Partners | Branch Technology of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who earned $85,930, and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, earning $14,070.
The list of materials that can be produced by 3D printing has grown to include not just plastics but also metal, glass, and even food. Now, MIT researchers are expanding the list further, with the design of a system that can 3D print the basic structure of an entire building. One interesting question that comes up is whether this system will be combined wiht Neri Oxman group’s glass 3D printing technology, thus enabling a truly integrated process for 3D printing buildings