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The Art of 3D Printing: Printing the Whole Building (II)

Relevant personnel hope that its final form will become a multi-functional building system. In order to make it more powerful, both electricity and solar energy can be used as its driving energy, so that it can be dispatched remotely, such as to the earthquake-stricken areas, and quickly build a much-needed shelter.click

In the words of Keating, "in the future, we hope to have such a fully automatic construction machine, you can send it to the moon, Mars or South Pole, then it will stay there, year after year of construction work. Norman Foster collaborated with the European Space Agency to design a case of an astronaut base on the moon using 3D printing technology. However, he also stressed that "we still want to make something that can be used right away." This is the initial mobile platform that the team made.

Using data from the field environment, future column placement of a structure can be based on radar-to-foundation results, and walls can have different thicknesses depending on orientation and location. For example, in the winter, the wall on the north side of the house is thicker and has a better isolation effect; or the force from the wall to the top of the wall is getting smaller and smaller; or the appearance of the surface is better. In fact, radar-based field detection has been widely used. It is called GPR. Due to the detection principle of the radar itself, the depth of detection and accuracy cannot be combined.

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The development of this building system, called the Digital Construction Platform, has benefited from the Mediated Matter team's vision of unstructured buildings, including the combination of building structure and appearance, and the integration of beams and windows into a single process. There are also quick adjustments and adaptations to new requirements during the construction process. From an architect's perspective, this project poses a great challenge to the traditional form of construction. Separate parts like walls, boards or windows can be continuously integrated with DCP. At present, this system can also continuously spray different materials to make uneven density items, and can also mix a variety of materials during the spraying process. Keating said the team's analysis showed that in addition to faster speeds and lower construction costs, it also made construction safer. In addition, since the shape and thickness of the structure can be adjusted and optimized, there is also a gain in the use of building materials.

 

Another solution to this problem with printer size: segmented assembly printing. In engineering, this system is indeed a very cutting-edge product, but more importantly, it has realized the transition from the machine age to the biological age. It no longer breaks down objects into different parts, separates them and assembles them, but creates an organic whole directly.

“So it's not just a printer for me, it's a new way of thinking about manufacturing. It helps to standardize the digital manufacturing field and also helps architecture... Our system is designed to look In the future of digital construction, it will bring us unlimited new possibilities."