Welcome to the future - the world of innovative technology. Imagine a building of concrete, built in a day! That's exactly the plan, a 3D printer for concrete buldings. This project will be funded by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation Countour Crafting.
According to Behrokh Khoshnevis, Professor and Director of Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California, a 2500-square-foot building can be built in a single day with the help of these concrete printers. For the basics, this oversized printer will work like any other computer assisted manufacturing program. However, unlike the usual 3D printers that contain a robotic tap and die machine to turn out parts based on a program, this printer will manufacture interior walls, outside walls, spaces for doors and windows, plumbing, air condtioning conduits for the building, in short, layer by layer printing following a set of programmed semantics.
Khoshnevis declared in a video presentation last year that the machine he's been working on can now manufacture concrete walls strong enough to bear a compressive stress of 10,000 pounds per square inch i.e. 3000 pounds more than the conventional concrete(less than or equal to 7000 psi). Strength more than the mentioned, up to 14500 psi is considered high.
Automation finally enters the field of construction. With automation, time will be saved and budget is reduced. This will also be beneficial for the military as their remote camps will have permanent buildings. Also, it will save a lot of workers from the fatal injuries at the construction site.
