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Low Carbon 3D Printed Homes – Lower Cost too

Posted on November 23, 2023 by dishanth

An emerging application of 3D printing technology is fabricating entire homes through additive manufacturing. Early adopters demonstrate that 3D printing residential buildings carry significantly lower embedded carbon than conventional construction methods.

By optimizing materials and printing processes, 3D home printing could provide affordable, efficient, low-carbon housing to growing populations if adopted at scale.

Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing builds structures by depositing materials layer by layer according to digital models. Concrete is typically extruded through a moving print nozzle onto a substrate, hardening upon deposition to gradually form walls and roofs of low carbon 3D printed homes.

Companies pioneering low carbon 3D printed homes include Icon, SQ4D, and Mighty Buildings. Their printed concrete or polymer designs streamline manual labor of framing, insulation, and finishing. Architectural designs are also easier to customize versus cookie-cutter manufactured units.

But the sustainability benefits are among the most significant advantages over current construction. Architect Sam Ruben, an early adopter of 3D printing for eco-homes, states that 3D printing can reduce lifecycle emissions by over 50% compared to standard building techniques.

Part of the savings comes from more efficient material usage. Conventional construction methods are wasteful, generating excessive scrap materials that go to landfills—3D printing deposits only the needed amount layer-by-layer, eliminating waste.

Printing also allows easier integration of recycled components like crushed concrete aggregate into prints, diverting waste streams. And lightweight printed structures require less embedded energy to transport modules. Optimized print geometries better retain heat as well.

But the biggest factor is speed – printed homes can be move-in ready in days rather than weeks or months. A standard SQ4D home prints in just 8-12 hours of machine time. Accelerated production means less energy consumed over the total construction period.

And speed has financial benefits, too, reducing the logistical costs of prolonged projects. Combined with simplified labor, 3D printing can cut estimated construction expenses up to 30%. Those cost savings make printed homes more accessible to low-income groups while stimulating large-scale adoption.

To quantify benefits, Mighty Buildings completed a life cycle assessment comparing their printed composite polymer dwellings against conventional homes. They estimated their product cut emissions by over one-third during materials and construction. Waste production dropped by over 80%.

Such data helped the company achieve third-party verified EPD declarations certifying their low carbon 3D printed homes. Mighty Buildings believes printed homes could eliminate over 440 million tons of carbon emissions if comprising 40% of California’s housing needs by 2030.

Despite advantages, barriers remain to limit widespread 3D printed housing. Printed buildings still require finishing like plumbing, electrical, windows, and roofing. Developing integrated printing around and including those elements will maximize benefits.

High upfront printer costs also impede adoption, though expected to fall with scaling. And building codes need updates to cover novel printed structures despite proven duribility. Some jurisdictions like California are pioneering efforts to add low carbon 3D printed homes as approved models in housing codes.

But if technical and regulatory hurdles are resolved, additive construction could offer meaningful emissions cuts. With global populations projected to add 2 billion new urban dwellers by 2050, low carbon 3D printed homes may become a go-to sustainable building technique, especially in growing developing countries.

The urgent need for dense, low-carbon housing solutions to accommodate global populations makes 3D printing’s advantages stand out. Printed homes advance from gimmick to viable strategy against climate change.

Eco-conscious homebuyers on a budget have a new choice – low carbon 3D printed homes made from low-carbon cement. A new housing tract in Round Top, Texas has introduced small dwellings printed using concrete that produces just 8% of the carbon emissions of traditional Portland cement manufacturing.

Habitat for Humanity last year unveiled its first low carbon 3D printed home in Williamsburg, Virginia. The project represented Habitat for Humanity’s first completed 3D printed home in the country.

By combining 3D printing techniques with more sustainable cement mixtures, homebuilders can reduce the carbon footprints of affordable printed housing even further.

Source Happy Eco News

Inside the lab that’s 3D-printing sleek car concepts for McLaren, Rolls-Royce, and more

Posted on March 23, 2022 by dishanth

When large automobile companies need to build a physical example of their designers’ latest flights of computer-rendered fancy, they call British fabrication specialist shop Vital Auto. Vital creates concept cars for a roster of clients that includes Rolls-Royce, McLaren, Jaguar, Lotus, Volvo, Nissan, Tata, and Geely.

The outfit uses two different methods to render these concepts into the physical world. The first is what is known as subtractive manufacturing. This is when a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine does the carving, following a software model of the part to know what to carve away. Commonly the process starts with a solid block of aluminum and the machine whittles a massive block of metal down to a finished component.

The second is 3D printing, which, in contrast, is additive manufacturing. This is when parts are made by gradually adding layers of material until enough have accumulated that there is a finished object. Additive manufacturing can be more efficient than subtractive manufacturing because it doesn’t produce a pile of aluminum shavings to be recycled, and it has the added benefit of being able to create shapes that are impossible to form using traditional subtractive methods.

“Clients typically come to us to try and push the boundaries of what’s possible with the technology available,” said Shay Moradi, Vital’s VP of innovation and experiential technology, in a video describing the company’s operations. “They don’t have time for experimentation themselves, but they can rely on us to bring about all the different elements that go into creating the exact tool that they require to do the job.”

Because it sounds like it comes from the realm of science fiction and the replicators of Star Trek lore, 3D printing is what we might expect that an outfit like Vital would prefer for its modern creations. In fact, the company says that it has found both 3D printing and the subtractive technique to be technologies that are complementary, not competitive, so it uses them both to create concept cars.

“A lot of people think additive manufacturing is here to replace subtractive manufacturing,” observed Vital design engineer Anthony Barnicott in the same video. “We don’t think that. We use the two together to support each other. We have many parts where we would use subtractive manufacturing and then have additive manufacturing produce all of the finer details. This allows us to have a more cost-effective way of producing our concept models.”

Vital got its start with a project to build the EP9 concept car for Chinese electric car maker NIO in 2015, and that low-slung supercar remains the company’s signature creation. The company employs an array of 3D printers, including 14 large-format FDM printers, three Formlabs 3L large-format stereolithography (SLA) printers, and five Formlabs Fuse 1 selective laser sintering (SLS) printers.

Each of these devices provides a unique capability as complements to subtractive manufacturing techniques. This has let Vital work more quickly while evaluating more alternatives than would otherwise be possible.

“Formlabs materials give us a nice, smooth finish for our painters to work with, we can use these parts straight out the printer, straight onto a vehicle,” said Barnicott.

“What interests me most about the Form 3L machines is their versatility, the ability to do a material change in less than five minutes and the variability of those materials going from a soft, flexible material to a hard and rigid material for us is priceless,” he added.

While highly visible parts like door handles and brake calipers might seem like the glamor components on projects like these, it is the new ability to 3D-print soft rubber door seals rather than having to tool up the extrusion process to make those parts, that the company points to as a highlight.

These tools have also had an impact on the process of creating concept cars because the shorter timeline for making parts permits rapid iteration of changes. “Typically when we would CNC machine parts, we would have to wait two, three, four days to get the parts in our hands,” recalled Barnicott. “The Fuse 1 has allowed us to have hands-on parts, in most instances, less than 24 hours.”

A typical show car—which generally will provide the appearance of the eventual product, but probably won’t include a drivetrain—can go through many design iterations, so speed is essential. “Sometimes we will have one or two iterations, sometimes we will have ten or twelve iterations,” he said. “Within those iterations can be further iterations of smaller components.”

With computer images of designs, we might wonder why these iterations are all done virtually. But that just isn’t a good enough representation of the parts, according to Moradi.

“I think there’s always going to be a place for physical manufactured objects as well,” he said. “There’s nothing that beats the sensation and feeling of holding an object in your hands with the correct weight, with the correct proportions, and the dynamics of how the physical environment changes your perception of that physical object.”

“There are certain things that you can’t qualify as emerging technology anymore,” Moradi noted. “3D printing is one of those things. 3D printing has gone from being a novelty to being an absolutely inseparable part of what we do.”

Source Popular Science