40 foot tall 3d printer prints buildings

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Reply to
F. George McDuffee
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============== My impression is this is intended for basic housing in less developed countries to use locally available materials.

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

Looks like a solution in search of a problem. I guess a gizmo that fits in the bed of a pickup and cranks out bricks won't get enough media attention.

Reply to
mike

If you're suggesting soil-cement bricks in competition with a 3D printer pumping out a similar thing, there's no contest. I worked on a soil-cement project 45 years ago. It's labor-intensive and very slow. The only place it makes any sense is in some place where people have nothing else to do.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I wonder what a good adobe block crew could do if their blocks were ready made and just laying them out with mud.

Mart> >

Reply to
Martin Eastburn

They'd run rings around a mud-spitting machine every day of the week.

What "we" need is an adobe mud brick-making-and-drying machine. Just dump in straw, mud, & water and it mixes/compresses/shapes/dries the bricks in minutes.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

They exist, in both manual and automatic versions. They require Portland cement in various amounts and the bricks take three days to cure, and a week or more to dry. Otherwise, they crack.

I've used the manual version with a long piece of pipe for a lever. They're a very slow way to make bricks.

The 3D mud printer will beat the hell out of you for time and manpower.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

An entire house seems more likely to crack than a brick.

John

Reply to
John Halpenny

'Don't know what thye're using for a binder and/or reinforcement. But the sections are a lot thinner than bricks, so prejudging its effectiveness probably is a mistake.

Soil-cement bricks, though, can be a problem to get right. There are university extension services that will analyze the soil and tell you how much Portland cement to use. But if there's a lot of organic material in there, you can still wind up with cracked bricks.

Adobe is rich in clay. If you're using local soil, it's going to depend on what's in it.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

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