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

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.

Comments

Terrible example of the use of 3D printing

[SlovakWakko]

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...

Re:Terrible example of the use of 3D printing

[ecotax]

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.

Re:Terrible example of the use of 3D printing

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Re:Not a Canal

[Anonymous Coward]

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 :)

Re:Q&A

[BlueStrat]

Weird to hear about this on SlashDot first

Amsterdam officials had intended to keep this tech under wraps until this test project was successfully completed, as they were hoping to convince US leaders to use it to build themselves a bridge to sanity.

Sadly...[sigh]

Strat

Re:Not a Canal

[Njovich]

I'm Dutch. Gracht is just a type of canal ('kanaal'). There is no a linguistic or translation problem, it's perfectly valid to call it canal.

Re:Anyone ever swim in those canals?

[ecotax]

And live to tell?

Yes, it's not exactly clean water, but now that all houses and house boats are supposed to be connected to the sewer system for a few decades, it's definitely less filthy than it used to be.

How many window-sitter prostitutes wind up in those a month?

Zero-point-something. Not nearly as many as drunk tourists.

Can you smoke cannabis on the streets of Amsterdam? Hashish?

Sure, it's not necessarily a healthy idea, but it's allowed (and done a lot).

Is there an age limit to smoke dope?

Drink spirits? Wine? Beer?

Sure, 18 years for alcohol/sigarettes, I assume for dope too, not sure.

Re:Did they have an engineer check the statics?

[ArcadeMan]

No, they're going to build it and call it a bridge. /sarcasm

Re:Not a Canal

[kyubre]

Being of Dutch descent and having chosen to live in The Netherlands for a number of years to reconnect with my (soggy) roots, it pleases me to no end that a Slashdot headline featuring 3D printing AND bridge construction, so quickly devolves into the nuances of Dutch linguistic syntax.

Re:Not a Canal

[X10]

I'm Dutch. I live in Amsterdam. It's not perfectly valid to call a gracht a kanaal. The issue here is not what the Dutch call our canals and grachten and sloten, the issue is that the fact that English has one word for a collection of things that the Dutch have individual words for affects more than just language. It affects the way people think about them.

Again, read Babel 17 and you'll see.