Castle build by concrete 3D printer nearing completion.
Originally shared by Andrey Rudenko
The 3D Concrete Printer 's castle test print is nearing completion!
The upper dark gray part was printed nonstop- 50 cm in 8 hours.
It was important for me to check the structure’s ability to stand (and not collapse) if I printed 50 cm in a row since I am using regular cement. Experiments have shown that I can print even more~ looks like around 75-100 cm would work just fine in warm temperatures.
I also experimented with random pigmentation; we’ll see how it turns out.
I still have some imperfections, mostly when I stop the printer. But if I print nonstop, the layers look great.Though I’m not completely finished with this structure yet, from the current progress, I can already see that I am ready for the next step, which is printing a house with this technology. The only thing I’m thinking of doing before then is making some improvements to the printer- redesign a few parts, and make a couple places more user-friendly.
There was some rebar in the foundation as this was printed right on grass. This is a prototype, future larger projects will have reinforcement.
Can you take a photo of someone standing in the doorway for scale?
Yep, I thought it was a bit smaller than the initial image suggested, still, impressive!
- How long did it take to print this?
- How much concrete did this consume?
- If you were to complete this, would it get signed off for human habitation by building regs?
I didn’t design the printer, and @Andrey_Rudenko can better answer all questions although he is pretty busy finishing the print. This machine is entirely his baby and I have only been helping out for a short time.
- Yesterdays print shows a maximum speed of over 50 cm per day, but with working through expected first time bugs and a very rainy summer it has taken a few weeks.
- Do not know exact amount.
- This first print is a playground, so it complies to a different set of codes. My personal view is that there are ways to make this as structurally sound as any building, but it might take some time for the codes to catch up to technology.
50cm per day? You sure have something wrong there …
As for building codes, I think they are already there … we’ve had pre-fabs (chicken sheds and all) since the end of the 2nd world war (well, at least in UK and the commonwealth).
50cm of vertical in 8 hours, the perimeter is quite large and for now the printer is still hand fed.
Ah! the vertical was missing. Do you know what the cumulative length was then? (would give a better idea of speed with the two)
Here is an old video before scaling up, the print speed is about the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMMsfVBaaDc
Uh, #SCA people, be aware. This combines more than one geeky interest of mine.
I don’t know how much it would cost, but we’ll all be able to have a castle in our back yard before too long.
How would this printer handle bridging or support structures? Maybe a second extruder with a material that can be burned away?
