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Man builds 3D printed concrete castle in his own backyard
- jqm 12y agoSuper awesome! Love the striated colors. I see this having a future. Possibly much more than 3-D home printers.
- andrewliebchen 12y agoThe project form is disappointing. Unprecedented building methods should result in a building that looks like nothing that came before it. Ironic too that the building was designed on paper with such romantic rendering of the elevation.
- ericHosick 12y agoPerhaps making something familiar helps people see and understand the underlying technology better?
- davorb 12y agoIf you look at the first iron bridges in the world, you will see that they were all built the way wooden bridges were built -- expect using iron. The [Iron Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge) is built with woodworking joints. It took us a lot of years to master and discover new construction techniques.
- andrewliebchen 12y agoWe didn't have computers to do static analysis or form-finding. Construction with new materials was necessarily conservative. Concrete (or cement in this case) is hardly a new material. The method of assembly is, and the fact remains that this tech has the potential to do amazing things. I'm not sure what this Disney recreation is trying demonstrate. Now that the difficult challenge of getting the device working has been met, I hope the inventor will tackle more...for instance, how does the device actually create an enclosure.
- zaroth 12y ago'The more important advances of this technology lie in its architectural possibilities and energy-efficiency. Architects have waited many years for this technology, and now that it's here, this opens up a whole window of possibilities; soon, we will see new kinds of architecture used to construct new structures.'
- grayclhn 12y agoI don't know which castles you've seen, but they tend not to look like horizontal corduroy.
- Theodores 12y agolt that too. The proportions were all wrong, wrong for what it was trying to be. It reminded me of some chintz pots you get from garden centres, in the gnomes section. Yes it is easy to criticise, however I feel that is 'fair' to do if one's dream of a 3D printed house turns out, well, ugly. It should be possible to work with the stripes and other materials to create wonderful shapes, as if e.g. a small, habitable part of Bryce/Zion/Arches National Park landed at your door.
- andrewliebchen 12y agoGlad that everyone seems to agree with me!
- burgers 12y agoAre there building codes that allow for full structures built with non-reinforced concrete?
- ams6110 12y agoProbably not. I wondered the same thing. There are some codes that allow for fiberglass-reinforced concrete in certain applications but I don't think load-bearing walls are one. If you read towards the end of the piece he admits he had to use rebar in the walls. That's not shown in any of the photos though.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoI can't remember at the moment where I read it, but there is a university in the states that is going to attempt a full house 3D print with concrete with rebar in the print process. EDIT: Found it! http://3dprint.com/12034/3d-printed-house-pool-ny/ http://3dprint.com/12034/3d-printed-house-pool-ny/ "New York City architect/contractor Adam Kushner begins construction of the first ever 3D printed estate, which features a 3D printed swimming pool, 4-bedroom, 2400 square foot home, and more. The 3D printer which will be a modified version of Enrico Dini’s D-shape printer, will, if all goes as planned, eventually be able to automatically place rebar within the 3D printed house, as it prints."
- WatchDog 12y agoAre the hollow walls filled with anything?
- kiiski 12y agoFrom the article: Rudenko therefore resorted to including rebars in the bottom and top walls. 'They are needed during the pouring of a variety of cementitious filling materials inside the printed walls.' The cement used, however, is just a regular cement mix with a few additives. 'It is possible to use a special quick-setting concrete to speed up the process, but it will affect the cost, and I don't see much reason to build a house extremely fast at the expense of higher cost and lower quality.'
- derjames 12y agoTechnically it is 'mortar'. 'Concrete' implies the use of gravel. It would be interesting to know if the mixture was heavily modified with chemical additives to give and maintain that particular flowability and to extend/reduce the setting times. Very cool project.
- DanBC 12y ago> 'Concrete' implies the use of gravel. Really? Concrete to me implies a mix of cement and aggregates, and he's using sand as the aggregate. You raise an interesting point: Cement is the expensive part and you lower cost by using bigger aggregates. A mostly cement house is, environmentally, pretty horrific.
- edmack 12y agoThis man is my hero.
- fernly 12y agoTried to leave this comment on the target page where there is discussion of smoothing the ridged surface: There's another option for a smooth finish, or a finish with a different texture: stucco. The printer could easily create nubs, or short spines, at regular intervals that would act as supports for another coating. That coating could be sprayed concrete, or it could be stucco applied traditionally with a trowel. Masons can create a wide variety of surface textures quickly with a trowel. So the proposal here is to let the printer do the structural part, and details like cornices and dentillations, but leave the finish of broad surfaces to professionals with skills.
- lafar6502 12y agoBrilliant mind
- bruce511 12y agoThe castle itself is pretty cool. What I would be interested in are the numbers in terms of cost saving (when implemented at scale). The printer seems to replace some of the labour of building in say brick or wood, but of course the labor to build the walls is only one of the costs involved. Consider the major cost areas; land, earthworks, foundations, structure materials, structure labour, windows and doors, plastering, plumbing, electrics, painting, bathrooms, kitchen, floors. Clearly this optimizes one of the processes, and it may make construction timeless and if you like the finish you can avoid plastering etc, but given that you only save the labor, not the materials,I'm not sure what the eventual monetary saving would be. Architecturally though it can do things your regular brickie probably can't do - curves for example - so that may end up being the true value of the printer.
- krasin 12y agoWith a second printer head added, it should be possible to deposit thermal insulator right within a wall. The insulator just needs to be semi-liquid (small balls are ok).
- saalweachter 12y agoSprayed insulation is already a thing. Additionally, there are additives (aerogels maybe? I can't remember but aerogels can do anything) you can add to concrete to raise its insulating value significantly.
- maxerickson 12y agoBoring old styrofoam is a major one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_polystyrene_concrete http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_polystyrene_concrete
- 2muchcoffeeman 12y agoWhat about using these to make prefab components?
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- afafsd 12y agoBig deal, we've been "3D printing" buildings by hand for centuries. How does 3D printing work? You lay down layers of grains of your material and sinter or otherwise stick them together, and build up an arbitrary structure that way. Well in the building case, you use grains called "bricks", stick them together not by sintering but with mortar, but you still build an arbitrarily-shaped (within the limits of what will stay up) structure from a uniform store of material. Just replace the printing head with a bricklayer, who is probably just as fast and cheaper than a robot anyway. The Byzantines managed to 3D print the Hagia Sofia in three years nearly seventeen centuries ago, and it's still standing.
- goostavos 12y agoAh, I see we're still doing the "top dismissive comment" thing around here. Good to know. Computers? Bah! We've been "computing" for centuries. How does it work? You take a pencil and paper -- or a pen (should you be feeling bold), and you write out the computations one by one, and build up a result that way. Pythagoras managed to compute that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, and that rule still stands.
- yummybear 12y agoWhile 3D printers and great and there's fantastic possibilities for their use ahead, I have a hard time seeing the printing of entire houses as one. We already have great modular, mass-producable and cheap elements for assembling houses: Bricks and concrete slabs. It's possible to assemble the basic structure of a house in days with prefabricated elements. Where I do see a need for 3D printers are in products that aren't mass producable, items that need special fitting, items with a unique design.
- ibisum 12y agoPrefab is labor and gas intensive. The advantage to this technology is that you can do all the assembly in place and don't need trucking and all the other headaches to get stuff there. As a tool for building dwellings in remote places, I think this tech has a bright future .. I can see it being used to rapidly build refugee homes in deserts and so on..
- emiliobumachar 12y agoYou'd still need to move around the input materials to the printer. I fail to see how it would be less gas intensive. I agree about labor though.
- hazz 12y agoOne advantage might be that you could have all the materials delivered in one go from a single supplier (a concrete manufacturer), instead of having multiple deliveries from different places for the different materials (brick, concrete, cement, rebar, etc).
- saalweachter 12y agoPrefab houses already largely solve this problem. All materials are delivered to the prefab factory, in bulk, the prefab house is assembled complete in about a week (including internal finish), and the house is delivered in a single delivery. If you locate your prefab factories along convenient bulk shipping routes (railroads, rivers, canals) and order houses from the closest factory, you've reduced your shipping costs considerably.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- zyztem 12y agoConcrete without rebar? I am in doubt about longevity of this structure.
- fuzzythinker 12y agoIf you read through the article, it does say he uses rebars. They go into the empty space in between the walls, to be filled with additional concrete. And watching the video, there seems to be horizontally lied wires as well.
- bane 12y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome
- Keyframe 12y agoI would like to hear form someone that is good with statics what he/she thinks about this.
- ermintrude 12y agoHe claims he's building the first functional 3D printed house, but the Chinese seem to be way ahead: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27156775 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27156775. Still pretty cool though. I think this might be a better system than 3D printing for houses though: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2683192/Could-giant-Lego-help-build-REAL-houses-Toy-shaped-bricks-help-construction-industry-build-80-faster.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2683192/Could...
- joshuaheard 12y agoGreat idea. I wish they would have included a picture of the whole printer.
- JungleGymSam 12y agoI'm curious why they don't have some kind of trailing shroud on the print head to better form the material. The round sides of each layer seem like wasted material. If those were formed into squared edges, via a shroud, would that provide a small increase in strength? Or even the same mount of strength with less material? In other words, if you shaved off the round sides you'd be better off because of less weight and same strength, no?
- Jack000 12y agoI'm not sure the material is viscous enough for that, it might have a certain degree of roundness regardless. In my head the shroud is directional, which means you'd need another actuator at the nozzle. If he's using off the shelf cnc software that could actually be complicated to implement.
- JungleGymSam 12y agoVery true. Corners would require some very careful orchestration.
- WalterBright 12y agoThe jargon you're looking for is an 'extrusion die'.
- noss 12y agoThis is interesting experimentation. However everything I see in 3D-printed houses seem very much built for the sake of being 3D-printer built. Technology in search of a problem to solve. And this is probably not far off the truth at this stage. Many people are also dismissive that see the productions and don't have enough imagination to see things possible here that are disruptive compared to what you do today. Later years I have begun to see and appreciate the handcraft gone into masonry. The results are very decorative and the material used is very modular. You buy standard size bricks (but sometimes cut them). I would love to see 3d-printing include bricks in the process. And then advance them so much that the machines can build arches. This is just my idea. I think architects that are less interested in the 3D-printing technology and more interested in amazing architecture need to be involved and use it as a component in construction.
- SupremumLimit 12y agoWell, there are brick laying robots already (although not combined with 3D printers): https://plus.google.com/photos/+Construction-robotics/albums/5953609607534592913 https://plus.google.com/photos/+Construction-robotics/albums...
- noss 12y agoGlad to see that, however this is not very sophisticated. We used to build houses where the loading walls were thick brick walls, and from what I understand it was mostly given up because of the costly skilled labor requirements. I dream of technology enabling us to construct houses like those again, and of course more beautiful architecture. I've seen some other brick laying robots, one that built prefab segments where fine distance and rotation of the bricks made a complicated pattern. And there is also those robots that lay brick roads.
- superasn 12y agoThis is pretty neat. How cool it would be if this could also start printing things on the inside like the bathroom tub, sink, and all the other fittings too.