The Netherlands will use 3D printing technology to print bridges
After years of development, 3D printing technology has taken off the veil of mystery and has begun to be applied in various fields. Recently, foreign media reported that Dutch designer Joris Laarman plans to use 3D printing technology to bring new changes to the existing construction industry. His plan is to bring a 3D printed robot for the building to the edge of Amsterdam's canals in 2017.
Then all he had to do was start the machine and leave, and in two months a beautiful steel bridge would appear on the water. And this is not a conceptual work, but a real working bridge, on which the people of Amsterdam can walk and use for decades.
To realize this plan, Joris Laarman founded a new company called "MX3D Research and Development", which specializes in the development and production of six-axis robots for construction. These robots are up to the task of large-scale construction, and they can even hang them from high altitudes and print out of metal and resin as long as they are tracked.
MX3D is not a high-tech concept product, it is more like an innovation in construction machinery. As early as February last year, Joris Laarman showed a 3D print of a metal sculpture in the air under the MX3D system, which was very impressive.
But Joris Laarman also says that after all, it's done in a lab and indoor environment, and in the real world, you encounter more unpredictable problems. The effects of various weather conditions and temperature changes, the failure of machines to run for long periods of time, and even drunks peeing on the ground and small children throwing objects can pose a fatal threat to the progress of the project. Therefore, it is important to enhance the self-detection and error correction of the machine and improve the anti-interference ability.
To address these issues, Joris Laarman turned to Autodesk, an architectural and engineering software company, for some help, and Maurice Conti, Autodesk's director of strategic innovation, said that in the future, he will work with MX3D on a deeper level and start to solve the problems that M3D is facing today.
"We often wonder: what kind of iconic 3D printed buildings can not only benefit the public, but also fully demonstrate our technical prowess?" Joris Laarman said in a telephone interview. "Then we thought it was the Netherlands, and what could be more exciting than printing a bridge on an old city canal. Not only is it great publicity, but if MX3D can build a bridge out of thin air, what building can't it print?
The bridge will be designed to be 24 feet long and will support Amsterdam residents walking through. The design of the bridge is very beautiful and intricate, and every detail looks as if it has been made by hand. And this is the great advantage of 3D printed buildings, as long as you have the right design drawings, you can theoretically make any shape of appearance, which is not possible with traditional buildings.
And unlike ordinary 3D printing materials, MX3D used a new type of composite steel newly developed by Delft University to build the bridge. It can be smeared layer by layer by a 3D printer like an ordinary material, but its strength is definitely up to the level of a building material.
The 3D printing robot produced by MX3D is also completely different from the general desktop 3D printer, it looks more like a train, running on paved tracks. And it's printed less like a jet and more like a weld, with more bearings and booms to swing it at more angles, and it can print the track it's going to run before moving forward.
In the not-too-distant future, we may see a scene where there are no more construction workers, no more dust, no more terrible noises, just different models of construction robots working together on a busy construction site. This was originally a scene from a science fiction movie, but now it is so close to reality.
However, it all depends on whether MX3D can solve this huge challenge, and although they are already working with some of the industry's top bridge engineering companies, there are still a lot of problems to solve, but fortunately they still have two years to prepare. Once they succeed, they will change the landscape of the construction industry forever.