Just seen an interesting bit of 3D printing on the TV programme about the current Chelsea Flower Show.

They were using fine concrete as the print material, and the print machine was 2 - 3 times the size of a human.

The result was a hollow cellular wall.

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Just seen an interesting bit of 3D printing on the TV programme about the current Chelsea Flower Show.

They were using fine concrete as the print material, and the print machine was 2 - 3 times the size of a human.

The result was a hollow cellular wall.

I can't visualise that. Is there a link or a picture? Must admit I've never understood 3D printing.

Just now, exchemist said:

I can't visualise that. Is there a link or a picture? Must admit I've never understood 3D printing.

The programme was on 8pm to 9pm this evening on BBC.

The section of video was a few minutes about half way through.

Being in England you should be able to get it on iplayer.

It did also bring to mind the problems that came with the post war Orlit and Airey houses buit with prefabricated pos and panel construction.

640 × 481

I know the panels or planks were set hardened concrete, but after decades joints leaked, letting in the water and wind.

The panel construction allowed diferential movement.

I don't know if the layers of printed concrete will suffer the same in time

Speaking of problems, I just saw a short documentary on the Ronan Point collapse and the associated issues with the design and corner-cutting during construction. (and immediately realized this was what the Monty Python Architect sketch was lampooning)

There is a company in Austin, Texas doing this. 3D printed homes using concrete which is impervious to rot and insect infestation and allows for incredibly creative shapes and curves that standard framing simply cannot achieve.

It’s very cool tech especially as costs come down, and could potentially one day help us to colonize other worlds.

I recall that about ten years back there was a story about a printed apartment complex in China. I do wonder what shape they are in now.

8 hours ago, iNow said:

There is a company in Austin, Texas doing this. 3D printed homes using concrete which is impervious to rot and insect infestation and allows for incredibly creative shapes and curves that standard framing simply cannot achieve.

It’s very cool tech especially as costs come down, and could potentially one day help us to colonize other worlds.

Is this the entire structure made on-site, or sections made in a factory that are them moved to the site for assembly?

If the latter, the structure required to enable the pouring of concrete to the 3D printer pattern must be humungous. I would expect it to be very costly and time-consuming to erect for each house. I presume this technique can't be used for reinforced concrete.

I wonder what they do to achieve an aesthetically acceptable surface finish. I don't imagine the ribbed surface will be very attractive. Though I suppose the grooves will retain moisture and may promote growth of moss and so on. So may they look quite green and "eco" after 10 years or so.

In my state, there's a program to build 3D printer houses on Lakota reservations.

(this story is about three years old - I think the project is now well underway)(unless the #47 insane clown administration has withdrawn funding)

https://www.aberdeennews.com/story/news/local/2022/02/14/nasa-plan-to-build-3-d-housing-includes-rosebud-reservation-college-native-american-sinte-gleska/6750546001/

Sinte Gleska University, a tribal college in Mission, may soon enter into a partnership with NASA that would result in new science education programs, more affordable housing for state reservations and the development of 3D housing that could someday be used on the moon or Mars.

The National Aeronautic and Space Administration has already committed to the partnership and allocated an investment of roughly $250,000 to the project that has a working title of “Enhancing Research in Additive Manufacturing Processes for Lunar Application and Planetary Use in Tribal Housing Development.”

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

Is this the entire structure made on-site, or sections made in a factory that are them moved to the site for assembly?

IIRC, they squirt the walls on-site and then bring in prefab roof trusses, but I'll have to check.

Edited May 20May 20 by TheVat

This is a story by the Indian WION News service from 2 years ago, which is about the construction of what was then Europe’s largest 3D printed building. It was built by by Kraus Gruppe at Heidelberg in southern Germany.

According to the report, it took just 140 hours to create this building  which was 55 meters long,11 meters wide and 9 meters high. According to the report, only two workmen were kept on site to supervise the construction process.

Edited May 20May 20 by toucana
removed repeat of 'built L.1

15 hours ago, exchemist said:

Is this the entire structure made on-site

To my knowledge, yes

The link I gave also mentions that smaller scale prototype 3D printed houses were created In Europe and in China back in 2015, using a sustainable and environmentally friendly plastic based on plant-oil.

18 hours ago, toucana said:

This is a story by the Indian WION News service from 2 years ago, which is about the construction of what was then Europe’s largest 3D printed building. It was built by by Kraus Gruppe at Heidelberg in southern Germany.

According to the report, it took just 140 hours to create this building  which was 55 meters long,11 meters wide and 9 meters high. According to the report, only two workmen were kept on site to supervise the construction process.

But how do they do the window and door openings? And what about the foundations? I assume the 140hr figure relates just to erecting the walls, i.e. the bit done by the 3D printer. So that would be 6 days, if done on 24hr operation, or 18 days if done on single day shift basis for daytime human supervision. I'd like to know how long it takes to build brick walls for a similar house.

Also, concrete is about the worst imaginable construction material from a CO2 emission point of view. I presume any substitute would have to be a pourable substance with similar consistency and setting time.

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

But how do they do the window and door openings? And what about the foundations ?

I found this video about framing doors and windows in a 3D printed house construction project. They refer at one point to “cutting gaps”, which are then retro-fitted with with pressure-treated wood ready to receive window casements and hinged door fittings, and the crew then fit rebar over the lintels for structural support - or so it seems.

9 hours ago, toucana said:

I found this video about framing doors and windows in a 3D printed house construction project. They refer at one point to “cutting gaps”, which are then retro-fitted with with pressure-treated wood ready to receive window casements and hinged door fittings, and the crew then fit rebar over the lintels for structural support - or so it seems.

Yeah, so all that has to be counted towards the construction time for the walls, since a bricklayer, say, would make the gaps and fit the frames as he went.

It's interesting, but I have real doubts that 3D printing is the future for house construction. I think we will make more use of renewable materials such as wood. Bricks are not great, as they have to be fired in a kiln and bonded with mortar (whether lime or cement-based), but not as bad as concrete.

People are trying to work IT into everything these days and half the time I feel it's a solution in search of a problem.

Just now, exchemist said:

People are trying to work IT into everything these days and half the time I feel it's a solution in search of a problem.

Dare I use that phrase "with you there bro" again without starting another forum war ?

+1

😄

1 minute ago, studiot said:

Dare I use that phrase "with you there bro" again without starting another forum war ?

+1

😄

Heh heh. It may be just the scepticism of age (I remind myself Bach thought the piano would never catch on), but I do feel there is a disconnect between some of these IT ideas and other values and goals, notably control of climate change and liberal democracy. The march of IT seems to threaten both.

I was reading a piece in yesterday's FT about the appalling energy consumption of LLMs. When some mug uses Chat GPT to look up a simple piece of information, it can take up to 62,000 times as much energy to provide the answer as it would using a simple Google search. That's because of all the stuff it does behind the scenes to synthesise an answer in its own fully formed sentences, dressed up with all the ingratiating guff and buzzwords it thinks help it sound authoritative and friendly.

Edited May 22May 22 by exchemist

People don't learn from their own or others' mistakes. In the UK, all natural forests have been cut down! This post-1920 peak is just a consequence of using more concrete, bricks and stone instead of wood:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestry_in_the_United_Kingdom

Doing a simple interpolation in 1920 on this graph, it is clear that if it were not for the cessation of timber use, 100% of the UK's forests would have been cleared by 2000.

Now you jump in and want to reverse this trend.

Good for someone with the mentality of a woodsman and lumberjack.

If you don't cut down xxx trees it won't make money. If a butcher doesn't kill yyy animals he won't make money. If a fisherman doesn't catch zzz fish he won't make money, etc. etc. etc. All on a piecework basis without thought.

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

People are trying to work IT into everything these days and half the time I feel it's a solution in search of a problem.

I have no idea what IT has to do with it. There are companies that melt plastic from PET bottles and create filament from it for construction.

The machine they show was 3D printed from garbage (material cost zero):

59 minutes ago, Sensei said:

People don't learn from their own or others' mistakes. In the UK, all natural forests have been cut down! This post-1920 peak is just a consequence of using more concrete, bricks and stone instead of wood:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestry_in_the_United_Kingdom

Doing a simple interpolation in 1920 on this graph, it is clear that if it were not for the cessation of timber use, 100% of the UK's forests would have been cleared by 2000.

Now you jump in and want to reverse this trend.

Good for someone with the mentality of a woodsman and lumberjack.

If you don't cut down xxx trees it won't make money. If a butcher doesn't kill yyy animals he won't make money. If a fisherman doesn't catch zzz fish he won't make money, etc. etc. etc. All on a piecework basis without thought.

I have no idea what IT has to do with it. There are companies that melt plastic from PET bottles and create filament from it for construction.

The machine they show was 3D printed from garbage (material cost zero):

This seems almost too obvious to be worth saying, but timber can be grown if future policy encourages it, making it a renewable resource. I refer you to the famous self-own of a UK TV interviewer a few years ago:

A graph of decline in UK forestation going back to the Medieval era, and then covering the later period when demand for agricultural land and timber for the navy resulted, historically, in a loss of forests, would seem to have limited relevance to a future policy of growing timber sustainably as a building material.

As for 3D printing, here's the opening paragraph of Wiki's description:

3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model.^[1][2][3] It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer control,^[4]with the material being added together (such as plastics, liquids or powder grains being fused), typically layer by layer.

Are you telling me this is not an IT-driven process?

Edited May 22May 22 by exchemist

Just now, Sensei said:

In the UK, all natural forests have been cut down!

I should check your facts with the natives before posting next time.

The relevant current body is Natural England and the relevant term is ancient woodland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_woods_in_England

Natural England lists 53,636 ancient woodlands in its database as of 2024

It is however true, as exchemist says, that human occupation of the British Isles has led to a steady deforestation over thousands of years.

Requirements for building, wars, farming clearance, sightlines (the Romans did a lot of this) and more have all played their part.

These have been only partly offset by deliberate (re)planting, which has occurred only sporadically, for example the New Forest, by order of King Henry VIII.

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

This seems almost too obvious to be worth saying, but timber can be grown if future policy encourages it, making it a renewable resource.

Natural building materials are generally "solar powered," and I hope will continue to be innovated. Hempcrete is one - much lower carbon than concrete and superb R value. In some areas, rammed earth and adobe are good options, needing minimal energy input. In the southern US, pine forests are grown as a crop - lots of board-feet per acre and fast-growing. And there's the Scandinavian trend now with using wood laminate beams to build tall buildings that would conventionally be steel, concrete, and glass. I would imagine countries with high population densities and slow-growing northern forests would want to import some of their wood from warmer regions where growth is rapid and constitutes a cultivated crop. OTOH, wouldn't want to be cutting down the rainforest ("Lungs of the World") to be putting in construction wood plantations. My guess is that earthen blocks and hempcrete will emerge as the least problematic, provided they can be made moisture-resistant.

IIRC, the other big challenge in terms of carbon load, is roofing where asphalt shingles predominate. Metal roofs seem like the best option, given their longevity and the relative ease of application, and of recycling the metal.

As far as IT solutions go, I can see it more useful on other planets or remote locations where labor is in short supply, but feel that the economics on most of Earth will favor factory-built modular homes, where structural units are built on a factory assembly line and then quickly assembled on site. That has become the cheapest option in the US, and I know some municipalities are looking at factory-built for affordable housing projects.

This technology is very good and maybe very time saving.I wonder what if we have 3d printers which print metal in future.It will need high temperature to sustain the liquid state of metal like iron,and it must be built from a material which have higher melting point.To instantly change state of metal(i.e cool it down) we will need some sort of mechanism,as its crucial to make a good structure.It can be possible but with advanced technology.

On 7/13/2025 at 1:16 AM, Dhillon1724X said:

This technology is very good and maybe very time saving.I wonder what if we have 3d printers which print metal in future.It will need high temperature to sustain the liquid state of metal like iron,and it must be built from a material which have higher melting point.To instantly change state of metal(i.e cool it down) we will need some sort of mechanism,as its crucial to make a good structure.It can be possible but with advanced technology.

We have 3d metal printers now. My experience with those printers is pretty limited but the parts seem to mostly be ok but not nearly robust as the same thing cast or machined.

On 7/13/2025 at 1:16 AM, Dhillon1724X said:

This technology is very good and maybe very time saving.I wonder what if we have 3d printers which print metal in future.It will need high temperature to sustain the liquid state of metal like iron,and it must be built from a material which have higher melting point.To instantly change state of metal(i.e cool it down) we will need some sort of mechanism,as its crucial to make a good structure.It can be possible but with advanced technology.

As npts2020 said, we have metal printers; we’ve had them for some time. But the ones I’ve read about don’t use liquid metal. They use metal powder which is sintered using lasers, similar to laser welding.

https://www.hubs.com/knowledge-base/introduction-metal-3d-printing/

• A thin layer of metal powder is spread over the build platform and a high-power laser scans the cross-section of the component, melting (or fusing) the metal particles together and creating the next layer. The entire area of the model is scanned, so the part is built fully solid.

• When the scanning process is complete, the build platform moves downwards by one layer thickness and the recoater spreads another thin layer of metal powder. The process is repeated until the whole part is complete