It may be that 3DCP is beginning to move towards its potential.
3DCP, or construction 3D printing, involves extrusion of concrete to produce large structures like walls, sculptures, or even buildings. The technology only extrudes concrete, so other aspects of buildings, including HVAC, plumbing, finishing, windows, etc., are all completed in the traditional manner.
3DCP then is really all about the concrete portions of a building, and it could have a significant effect on that segment of a building project.
I say this because there have been countless inaccurate reports of “3D printing a house in 24 hours” and similar over many years. These are misunderstandings, or worse, exaggerated marketing claims. It put 3DCP in a questionable position in the minds of many.
That is finally starting to change with the persistent efforts of several companies that are using the technology in more practical ways.
One example of this was a recent project undertaken by Alquist, a 3D construction company that takes on large building projects. The company makes use of robotic 3DCP technology produced by RIC Robotics.
Their latest project is pretty impressive: they 3D printed an expansion to a Walmart located in Alabama. The project included printing concrete walls 5m tall (16.5ft), with a total enclosed area of 465sm (5000sf).
That was not the largest 3DCP project on the books, but what was most interesting was the duration of the project: from start of setup to completion, the entire project took only seven days.
This is a dramatic increase over the company’s previous Walmart project, which apparently took 45 days to complete. Evidently, Alquist learned a considerable amount of knowledge from the earlier project and made changes to reduce equipment downtime on the second project.
The seven days represented only the concrete portions of the project, and other trades had to complete the new warehouse inside the 3D-printed concrete walls. Nevertheless, this project demonstrated that it is possible to build reasonably large structures in good time.
One of the key advantages of the second project was the use of RIC Robotic’s technology, which takes only a few hours to set up. Other 3DCP systems can take several days to set up on the build site. The simplicity of their system also requires fewer workers to set up and operate.
Improvements of this nature will certainly be of interest to those planning building projects. Making projects complete faster with more efficiency is the key to attracting more customers.
Via Alquist
