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Shanghai Company 3D Prints 6-Story Apartment Building and Villa
ErnieKey writes Last year, a Shanghai based company made news by 3d printing a bunch of houses. Now that same company, WinSun has accomplished something never seen before. They have successfully 3d printed a 6-story apartment building as well as an incredibly detailed home. The structures were unveiled at the Suzhou Industrial Park. "These two houses are in full compliance with the relevant national standards," Ma Rongquan, the Chief engineer of China Construction No.8 Engineering Bureau, explained. "It is safe, reliable, and features a good integration of architecture and decoration. But as there is no specific national standard for 3D printing architecture, we need to revise and improve such a standard for the future."
well you can stand on the roof
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and how will that standard be published and disseminated?
2D printers sigh with relief, they are still relevant
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sure it seems cheap, but have you seen the prices on the refill cartridges? Outrageous!
John
And yet summary says 6...
One of TFA says 5 stories and the other FA says 6 stories. I guess it all depends on how you like to count. But I am going with 5 stories as that is the number of windows high the apartment block is, and that particular FA seems to be the more authoritative one.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
This is simply a way to cast concrete in a factory and then wheel the parts to the construction site.
You still need to add all the plumbing, wiring, windows, doors, flooring, etc...
Settle down with the hyperbole already.
It's not any different from using factory-trimmed wood or pre-cast concrete steps.
But just say "3D printing" and the mindless hype starts and brains turn off everywhere.
The printed part is a concrete skeleton that acts as a form that needs to cure and then be filled with concrete. None of the finishing work is printed. It is basically a cast-concrete structure, where the typical metal forms were replaced with a 3D-printed skeleton. Of course the printed skeleton is a couple orders of magnitude rougher than what you'd get with metal forms, so the walls need heavy finishing before they can be presentable.
What they've done is perhaps a step in the right direction, but they are very, very far from truly 3D-printing an entire building. First of all, they'll need to have an inline concrete mixer that can continuously mix a fast-curing mix, so that they could print shapes that are filled-in. They also need to change the shape of the nozzle so that the deformed (compressed) shape will be rectangular, and not oval as it is now. They really did everything without much thought or understanding of what it takes to do it right. It is, at best, cargo cult 3D printing. They did all the right moves without understanding what it really takes to do it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
While they're "printing" concrete I'm wondering how the bonding between layers holds up. This looks like an automated shotcrete system to me which isn't great for ultimate structural integrity at least from what the photos show. They don't show substantial reinforcement in some of the photos in the article I'd be concerned about cracks and delamination between the layers during earthquakes or over time with general changes in temperature and humidity. I don't see how this is revolutionary since laid up concrete walls are being used all over the world in houses, apartments and warehouses worldwide. The guys come out, lay out forms, put in the reinforcement and do a continuous poor. Sure this may save on labor ultimately and the reinforcement could be pre-fabbed as well, so it may ultimately drive down costs.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
it's not 3d printed concrete. it's 3d printed mortar. It's not strong stuff. I have seen some of the US based building prints and I am not impressed at all. On top of this nobody has done any seismic testing or other stability testing on any of the builds.
I believe it has potential, but not yet, and honestly building plywood forms and doing a pour over a welded reinforcement rod system is far far stronger than this. Plus they need a way to set in electrical and plumbing during the build process.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
3D printing might receive my award for the most disruptive modern technology. It is obvious that there is a potential to replace almost 100% of the construction trades. And furniture makers might need to pray a bit as well. I am all for 3D printing but just like cell phones and personal computers 3D printing will have numerous ways of displacing human workers. There have already been boats built with 3D printing and I'll bet someone 3D prints an airplane in the near future. Automobiles with frames and bodies built by 3D printing are a distinct possibility. The displacement of human labor is accelerating rapidly. Yet US society has done nothing in preparation of the negative effects on the population. It makes no sense at all to wait until chaos is at hand to start reforming social practices to accomodate permanently displaced workers.
As an example, in the USA, the ground floor counts, while in Europe only the floors/stories above ground floor count.
You have differentiate between numbering (naming) the floors and counting the numbers of floors in a building.
A five storey building is a five storey building, but some number the floors from floor 1 to floor 5, others count ground floor, 1st floor, 2nd floor...
Also, not all of Europe is the same. Here in Germany we have both variants, depending on region and design of the buildings.
The actual commercial potential appears to have the same issue that 3D plastic printing does vs injection molding. Basically the cost of a mold is really not that expensive when you are making thousands of parts, and the production speed difference is just phenomenal.
But sure, if the resolution was better I can imagine this being used for one-off or low volume boutique architectural projects where the part volume does not justify the cost of making pre-cast formwork.
Maybe another decade and some material breakthroughs (a concrete that can be laser hardened or something for rapid print speeds) and it could be pretty interesting for the masses.