Tasked with building a new data center in an urban area of Germany, the team behind the Wave House harnessed the benefits of 3D printing technology to inject a sense of style into the unglamorous world of cloud-computing infrastructure, creating Europe's largest 3D-printed building in the process.
The whole print process video is embedded in the article…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfWryED7Zrk
It really is just a big 3D printer. At first i thought the walls were like 90% air with no infill but it looks like they fill them up with rebar and cement.
So really its just a thing that prints unique molds to pour concrete into so not really “a 3D printed building”
Thanks, but I more meant specifics, like what is the “cement-like mixture”, what extruder they are using. If it would be possible to DIY this basically.
There are several companies doing 3D printed concrete. It generally is concrete, just formulated and mixed for being piped and coming out of a 4" nozzle. Ifyouu search YouTube you can find more detailed breakdowns, but the principles are the same as desktop FDM, just scaled way up. That said, don’t expect to be doing this in your backyard unless you have heavy equipment and large scale building tools laying around.
This guy DIY’d it way back in the early days of concrete extrusion. He actually let a college class I was in see it. It was definitely an involved project and the result was pretty rough around the edges. His system was pretty slow and took a substantial number of batches to complete. Getting the machine and mix balanced for extruding all in one go would be pretty difficult and you’d probably need to have it mix continuously rather than in batches.
Unfortunately I don’t remember much about the type of mix he used or the pumping system. So I can’t guide you in the right direction.
From what I understand (based on smaller printed buildings anyway) it’s identical to FDM 3d printing pretty much, except that instead of filament, a massive onsite silo contains a liquefied cement-like mixture. The nozzle also has a valve of some sort to immediately stop flow.
Typically one operator has a computer running the printer host software, and others manually fix-up print errors (and things like blobs) while the mixture is still damp. A paperclip shaped rebar is also inserted into the walls every few layers for additional structural integrity
There are challenges with things like rainfall retention in walls during construction, but various companies have their own way of dealing with that from what I understand…
Due to the mixture it’s usually restricted to walls AFAICT. Overhangs like doorways need beam supports to be inserted into the structure beforehand
Anyone know exactly how this works?
The whole print process video is embedded in the article… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfWryED7Zrk It really is just a big 3D printer. At first i thought the walls were like 90% air with no infill but it looks like they fill them up with rebar and cement. So really its just a thing that prints unique molds to pour concrete into so not really “a 3D printed building”
Thanks, but I more meant specifics, like what is the “cement-like mixture”, what extruder they are using. If it would be possible to DIY this basically.
There are several companies doing 3D printed concrete. It generally is concrete, just formulated and mixed for being piped and coming out of a 4" nozzle. Ifyouu search YouTube you can find more detailed breakdowns, but the principles are the same as desktop FDM, just scaled way up. That said, don’t expect to be doing this in your backyard unless you have heavy equipment and large scale building tools laying around.
Oh and you also need a decently sized stone crusher for all your failed attempts and speedbenchies.
https://m.startribune.com/minnesota-man-builds-castle-with-3-d-concrete-printer/273410261/
This guy DIY’d it way back in the early days of concrete extrusion. He actually let a college class I was in see it. It was definitely an involved project and the result was pretty rough around the edges. His system was pretty slow and took a substantial number of batches to complete. Getting the machine and mix balanced for extruding all in one go would be pretty difficult and you’d probably need to have it mix continuously rather than in batches.
Unfortunately I don’t remember much about the type of mix he used or the pumping system. So I can’t guide you in the right direction.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=cfWryED7Zrk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
From what I understand (based on smaller printed buildings anyway) it’s identical to FDM 3d printing pretty much, except that instead of filament, a massive onsite silo contains a liquefied cement-like mixture. The nozzle also has a valve of some sort to immediately stop flow.
Typically one operator has a computer running the printer host software, and others manually fix-up print errors (and things like blobs) while the mixture is still damp. A paperclip shaped rebar is also inserted into the walls every few layers for additional structural integrity
There are challenges with things like rainfall retention in walls during construction, but various companies have their own way of dealing with that from what I understand…
Due to the mixture it’s usually restricted to walls AFAICT. Overhangs like doorways need beam supports to be inserted into the structure beforehand