To make large scale concrete 3D printer to make buildings.

Hello Ahishek,

I'm new to the CNC world but not new to building houses and it is possible to make one (there are examples on YouTube).

If you have ever moved a wheelbarrow of wet mortar then you know how heavy it is. You would need some heavy duty motors, big steel gantries, some sort of silo to feed the cement in from (consistency of the cement would be critical) and an ability spray the cement to bond each layer and it would be pretty difficult to setup on your own - you aren't going to find the materials to do this in the OpenBuilds part store.

Cheers

Adam

PS When I was doing my apprenticeship I would have loved a great big tent to be setup around the house to keep me dry!

 

I have to chuckle here. You are asking a question of immense scale on what is essentially a hobbyist CNC site. What you are trying to do is something that would take a large team, with a lot of resources, material and financial. Those Nema 34's are not going to cut it

You would need to use steel i-beams or something similar to make up the gantry.. maybe repurpose a gantry crane system, replace the pulley system with a concrete extruding system...

 

These are gigantic machines....

 

The steel columns and beams in your picture can be purchased from any steel fabricator there is nothing special about them. The same is true of the concrete pump/mixer - any concrete supplier would have some or know where to buy one.

The control unit and motors (possibly hydraulics on the Z axis but I can't tell from your picture) as @ljvb said probably came off a small gantry crane system. I suspect the problem is the printer head and nozzle will be proprietary and you will have to design and manufacture it yourself.

The picture that @joe williams posted with the central crane system is clever as you don't need the large beams for your x and y axis and the associated setup time and you could just use a another crane to install and remove it from the centre of the house when it has finished printing.

When you come up with a detailed design I would love to see it.

Cheers

Adam

 

I suspect that the majority of a system like this will be custom built...you'll have to spend some time on google to figure out what can be made from off the shelf parts and what will need to be fabricated by you. Have you tried to find an existing system that you can travel to and ask the builder these questions?

 

Out of interest what is the concrete specification? It looks really stiff/fluffy in the photo you posted.

Cheers

Adam

 

I am also interested in building my own concrete 3D printing system. I a an industrial engineer with a strong IT experience (software development and networking) and I am pretty confident that I can do it. I have done things that are technologically more complexe than this. The biggest challenge is the gargantuan nature of the project and the financial requirement ... but the ROI is huge. I have been trying to gather information about what others have doing so far for quite some time. One of my concerns is that the system should be able to easily recover in case of a failure that make it stop and ends up causing the mortar to start solidifying in the pipes and other conduits.

 

For any of the skeptics out there, check this link out about a man who built a concrete 3D printer in his garage: Man Builds Concrete 3D Printer In His Garage

 

We have a guy in Minnesota that built a concrete 3d printer in his garage and printed a castle in his backyard.
Video of the Week Minnesota man 3D prints backyard castle | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Newsroom
Video of the Week Minnesota man 3D prints backyard castle