Remember when we told you that customized 3D printable materials are often the Holy Grail in construction projects? Â Well, materials construction company CEMEX and construction 3D printing company COBOD have worked together on the development of a new solution that would help achieve 90% cost reduction in 3D concrete printing materials.
The new solution has been developed based on one observation: despite the growth of 3D concrete printing of building shells, this market remains limited to the expensive cost of the 3D printing mortars. The problem is, the first priority being the adoption of construction 3D printing in the beginning, players in the field focused on providing convenient ready-to-mix dry mix mortar solutions , that are relatively easy to apply in the various 3D printers and demonstration projects. Here is the thing, dry mix mortars typically are 5-10 times more expensive than ordinary ready-mix concrete. Experts in the field believe that significant savings can be obtained thanks to efficient use of materials – this is not to mention that the technology requires less need for labour and delivers advantages in terms of form freedom.
To overcome this issue of cost, CEMEX and COBOD have launched D.fab. This solution consists of a system of admixtures, where specific chemicals are introduced at the batching plant and designed to make the concrete fluid and easy to pump. Whereas another admixture, which speeds up curing, is added through the dozing unit at the printhead of COBOD’s printers and makes it possible for the concrete to gain shape instantaneously and buildable. The solution only requires central sourcing of less than 1% of the concrete mix, while more than 99% of the concrete can be based on local available raw materials including the cement, which can come from any cement maker, leading to very significant cost savings compared to 3D printing mortars, a press release told us.
Both partners have already found a first user in Angola: Power2Build, a construction company that 3D printed a house in Angola, a 53 m2 (570 sf) house.
Ricardo Almeida, CEO of Power2Build, Angola said: “To solve Angola’s and Africa’s affordable housing crisis requires not only a technology, that can build faster and can work with far less skilled labor, but also materials that are as cheap as ordinary concrete. For our first building for the walls we used 12 m3 of concrete of 80 Euro/m3, so our total cost for the concrete materials for the 53 m2 house was less than 1.000 Euro. With such low materials prices, the strength and quality of concrete combined with the speed and automation of 3D printing, we can help solve the affordable housing crisis in Angola and elsewhere.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGntdpyoKnY
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