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3D Printed Steel Pedestrian Bridge Will Soon Span an Amsterdam Canal

Posted by samzenpus on from the spanning-the-gap dept.

ErnieKey writes: Amsterdam is famed as the "Venice of the North," with close to 1,300 bridges in use. The next bridge to be built over one of the city's canals will be easily its highest-tech, as it will be constructed via 3D printing technology from MX3D. The steel pedestrian bridge, brought about by a collaboration between MX3D, Heijmans, Joris Laarman Lab, and several sponsors and supporters, will be built using 6-axis industrial robots that will begin construction on either bank and build in toward one another.

4 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Terrible example of the use of 3D printing by SlovakWakko · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They are actually welding the structure one drop of molten metal at a time. The energy expended must be staggering compared to classical construction technologies, and I'm pretty sure the resulting metal is seriously inferior to standard steel...

    1. Re:Terrible example of the use of 3D printing by ecotax · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You raise an interesting point. The article linked to in an earlier post quotes the robot manufacturer like this:

      MX3D says it can 3D print strong, complex structures of durable material, and that the new technique is more cost-effective and scalable than current 3D printing methods.

      Sounds that comes straight from the marketing department, which suggests that something built using their technology is, at the moment, a more brittle, less durable, and not as cost-effective and scalable as something built using the traditional way. On the other hand, they do claim this new technology is making progress on these fronts.

      --
      "Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
    2. Re:Terrible example of the use of 3D printing by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, the controlled atmosphere is particularly important for the powdered metal printing, like SLS and SLM. High surface area metals are flammable as all hell. You can set fire to wire wool with a lighter to see how well iron can burn, and powders are worse as they can floof up into a nice mist cansing really bad things to happen.

      Looking at the page, the robot tool end looks rather like a MiG head. This wouldn't be too surprising, 3D printing with MiG has been discussed and tried before and it's the easiest of the welding techniques. Very much point and click, which is great for automating.

      http://mx3d.com/wp-content/upl...

      That's from their website. There is a head with a fine wire coming out of it. The concentric thing around that is almost certainly the gas blower. This blows out some inert shield gas, such as a CO2/Ar mix for steel or pure Ar for alu, which provides the inert atmosphere. The atmosphere is just to stop oxidation and scale which prevents good welding: the surface area isn't really enough for fire.

      The problem is that mig welding isn't usually done outside since even a small breeze will happily blow away the inert shield, ruining the weld. I guess they could use a metric fuckton of gas to avoid that problem for light breezes.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  2. Re:Not a Canal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Linguistically speaking, the whole eskimo-snow thing has been mostly debunked.

    However, for those interested, I cam across this (Dutch) page (google translate). Apparently, there is a branch of science called hydronomy that deals with the etymology of names for bodies of water...

    Canal, channel, and dutch kanaal is from the latin canalis, while "gracht" is from the germanic graven (to dig, in English in grave and groove). Dictionaries are unclear on a real distinction between kanaal and gracht, but in my intuition in general a gracht is in an urban setting (including moats around cities and castles) and has a dual purpose of defense and transportation, while a kanaal is longer and aimed at transportation.

    Of course, both kanalen and grachten are also extremely important for drainage, where they are joined by the "wetering" (water-ing), which is a dug canal with drainage as its original purpose. In general, it would be dug parallel to a river to help drain the land next to the rivier, and would drain to a lower point, often a "spui" (spew) which would drain into sea at low tide using a sluice. A well know example is the boerenwetering (farmers watering) in Amsterdam, which used to run from around Ouderkerk to the Spui square in central Amsterdam. The water near the Rijksmuseum (Hobbemakade / Ruysdaalkade) still bears the name, and if you look at the map you see how along a straight line from the Spui to Ouderkerk there are still a lot of remains of the old Wetering.

    TMI, I know :)