Pleskan T.A.

Irkutsk National Research Technical University

Use of Tangible Printing in Building. Review of Constructional Material for Printing.

Nowadays 3D printing arouse great interest. 3D printer has been invented recently, but today there are a lot of printed toys, dishes, clothes, machines, food and even human organs. The next stage in using 3D printers may be universally printing of domestic buildings and communal buildings.

3D printer is a special device which uses the method of stacked arrangement of a physical entity according to digital 3D model designed in electronic form. In foreign countries such 3D printers also are called fabber, and the process of tangible printing – rapid prototyping.

Innovating buildings are printed on a special 3D printer. It allows us to make objects which are 6,4 meters in height, 9,75 meters in breadth and 152,4 meters in length.

Sphere of application of 3D printing is spreading every day. In Dubai specialists want in earnest to use 3D printer in realization of scale project – printing of the whole building, including walls, furniture and other parts.

Parts of buildings made with using of 3D printing technology have been before, but such complex project will be realized for the first time ever. National committee of innovations in UAE works together with WinSun Global and some other companies and the aim of the project is building construction 6 meters in height, which will be all printed. The speciality of the project is that printing will be in the place of building. It will allow to avoid the necessity of transportation of elements, to accelerate the process of building and to avoid the damages in process of transportation.

WinSun Global has printed 6-storied building recently in China. Its square is about 186 square meters. In the new project specialists of the company are going to use special iron concrete, fiber metal laminate and fibre glass reinforced gypsum. Wall block, furniture and elements of decoration will be printed separately.

Engineers mention that the work will take several weeks. The use of innovative technology of 3D-printing and non-standard materials will let reduce labour payment expenses of constructors on 50-80% and abridge amount of material debris on 30-60%.

The building will be the part of Dubai’s museum of the future, which will be opened in 2017. There will be different exhibitions, conferences and other events.

Recently such buildings have been demonstrated by Shanghai WinSun company, which built ten similar concrete buildings with the help of such printers. The most small-scale building, which has been demonstrated on the exhibition, is on sale for 100 000 pounds. In spite of high price these buildings have decisive superiority – such building is printed on 3D-printer less than period of 24 hours. The company has taken several hundred contracts for building.

As the material we can use such material as: glass-reinforced special iron concrete, gypsum, polymer matrix composite material. 3D printing allows to get unique concrete form without timbering. It will reduce labour inputs and time of facility commissioning. As the material for building domestic houses we can use aggregate secondary building refuse, such as cement, broken glass, waste metal. Special matrix of these waste is applied from coat to coat with a printer until printing wall will achieve stated bulk. As the material we can use even organic material.

For example, group of specialists from The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia worked out interesting project, which may set the world alight in building – solar powered robot making 3D printing of grand-scale architectural construction from locally available material (such as sand and soil) with use of liquid binder.

Of course, right now it is just an research project, which is called “Stone Spray Project”. Its founders consolidate that they have created the most ecological building technology – as for building they use just natural materials and solar energy (excepting liquid binder). For example, it is really to put the army of such robots the Sahara desert (but of course provide them with cement) and after some time there will be a city, which has been created on the computer. Or just walls which scotch sand and do not allow it to move on exposure to the wind.

In building we can make objects of different structure and texture. Thanks to tangible printing we can create objecte of difficult forms with use of dissimilar materials.

Recently DUS Architects company has declared about its great plans of using 3D-printing for building of all house in Amsterdam. In building they use massive blocks which are 180 kilos in weight.

According to the architect project, printed blocks will be filled with special foamy bod, which is now on the stage of development. This material after setting up will be as strong as concrete and it will allow to bond separate elements of the construction together and impart them ponderosity and tenacity.

As the material engineers want to use bioplastic, which can be exposed secondary treatment and crushed to powder. Plastic material contents naturel components and it allows to reduce ecosystem load. Architects plan to use for building of some rooms other materials, but not polypropylene. For example, one room will be built from material based on farina starch, other room – from material based on recycle squeeze bottles. So architects may demonstrate not only possibilities of 3D-printing, but principles of sustainable construction in the sphere of using organic and recycle materials.

3D printer works with wide variety of materials from plastic to natural material. Constructional material for 3D printing allows to recycle trash and non-degradable waste. So we can predict development and widespread use the technology of 3D building.

References

1. 3D PRINT CANAL HOUSE.Worlds' first 3D Printed Canal House built at an expo-site in Amsterdam: [Electronic resource] // URL: http: //www.dusarchitects.com/projects.php? Categorieid = housing (Date treatment: 11/26/2015)

2. Hi-tech.ua: [electronic resource] // SoftPress 2002-2015. URL: http://hi-tech.ua/ (Date of treatment: 11/26/2015)

3. Usenkov.D. House built ... the printer: Portal of the journal "Science and Life" .2005-2007 // 7 September 2012. URL: http://www.nkj.ru/news/21071/ (Date of treatment: 11/20/2015) .

4. Gizmag 2003-2015: [Electronic resource] // World's first 3D-printed office building to go up layer by layer in Dubai URL: http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-first-3d-printed-office- dubai / 38253 / (Date of treatment: 11/26/2015)