WHOLE VILLAGES ARE PRINTED IN RUSSIA
The use of 3D printers in construction is becoming commonplace. This year was no exception, on the contrary, it was this year that additive technology took another step in its development - not only individual houses are printed on the foundation, but also entire sites are built up. Something that has been waiting for a long time has happened - mass construction using 3D printing. The whole history of practical building 3D printing, as well as the evolution of equipment, began 8 years ago. At the same time, 3 companies were engaged in new technology and the development of equipment for construction 3D printing. These are AMT (formerly SPETSAVIA), Apis Cor, WinSun.
Initially, construction printers were used mainly for printing small architectural forms (MAFs) in a workshop. Then, on the workshop equipment, printing of a part of the buildings in the workshop began, followed by assembly on the foundation (prefab). Only then did printers appear that could print entire houses on the foundation.
The AMT line of construction printers includes 11 models designed for various purposes and tasks of customers. There is a fundamental difference between shop stationary printers (designed for printing in a production environment) and field printers designed for printing on a foundation. At the moment, several construction companies in Russia, Europe and the USA have already purchased equipment for field printing (in the line of AMT construction printers this is the S-300 series). Moreover, they began to build several houses at once on one construction site.
For example, in the Republic of Tatarstan, at the moment, about 10 out of 34 planned houses have been printed using the S300 construction 3D printer, and this is a whole village!
In the city of Yeysk, 12 houses have already been printed, in the city of Elista - 2, in the Kursk region a house destroyed by the elements for a large family has been printed.
The strength characteristics of such houses depend, first of all, on the internal filling. Since all characteristics are calculated in advance by the project, the house printed according to the project will correspond to the declared characteristics, respectively, it will be durable and safe for living. It should be noted that houses printed on a construction 3D printer have a fairly high class of housing construction and are a monolithic reinforced concrete structure with a standard service life of about 80-120 years.
The attention of construction companies to this technology is attracted by several factors: automation of the production process, which reduces errors during construction; minimization of the human factor (when working with a construction printer, 2-3 people are needed); no waste at the construction site; noiselessness of the construction process, because the construction printer works very quietly; high positioning accuracy (2 mm), which increases the accuracy of manufacturing products; a high proportion of effective use of working time, including the absence of downtime, typical for traditional construction technology, work day and night; the ability to print complex shapes. At the same time, the cost of construction using additive technology is reduced by up to 30% per building box, which is printed by a construction printer. In the total cost of the house, this is approximately 8-12% savings compared to traditional building methods.
Every year more and more requests come from construction organizations and not only, regarding the purchase of construction 3D printers. So, at the moment, the AMT company has sold more than 220 printers to 15 countries of the world (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine, UAE, USA, South Korea, India, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany).
The trend of acquiring innovative equipment can also be traced to Eastern and Asian countries. Such countries are subject to constantly changing weather conditions: typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, as a result of which buildings can collapse, and it turns out to be too long to build new house structures quickly. It is to be expected that the introduction of additive technologies in the construction industry will help the state data to regularly update the housing stock.
All of the above suggests that 3D printing in the construction industry is only gaining momentum, but it does it very confidently, and most importantly, it resonates with consumers.