Building Print Bots - Printed Building Concept by MCmaks

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This is just concept modeling, not a "useful" thing.
Printed building concept:
By printing plastic on a large scale, buildings can be constructed with less labor, especially areas that typically require special trades. Specifically, electrical conduits, electrical boxes/gangs, plumbing/piping, and paint-free interior and exterior surfaces could be printed. Other features, including gutters, insulation cavities, stairs/railings, counters, sinks, and door/window (rough) framing could potentially be printed as well. (The labor of painters, plumbers, electricians, etc is significantly reduced). Also, the printed plastic serves as a print-in-place form that can be filled with concrete for strength. Finally, this should enable architectural designs that aren't currently practical/feasible. All the things below are related to this greater printed building concept (concrete bones and plastic skin, veins, nerves, etc).
Printed Building Concept -- Wall Section Models (Not this thing)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2827034
Two STL files (conventional and new style), roughly full scale, not yet printed.
Models the primary features/advantages of the printed building concept.
Plastic as a print-in-place concrete form (concrete skeleton, plastic skin)
Printed (plastic) piping (no in-wall plumping labor)
Printed (plastic) electrical conduit, boxes, and fixtures
Labor-free finished interior and exterior surfaces (no siding, no painting)
Labor-free, printed gutter
Design flexibility
Conventional style (round pipes, schedule xx, compatible with current pipe/conduit/boxes)
New style, print friendly (rectangular pipe/conduit)

Building Printer Concept Model - Parallel Print Bots (THIS THING)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2852345
A single hot end would most likely be painfully slow, so this approach uses distributed print bots to parallel the printing effort (12 bots animated, 24 hot ends). The bots are essentially scissor lifts with two arms to guide hot ends. (Rough ideas; plastic? maybe PVC. filament or pellets? maybe filament. local accuracy/precision? maybe stereo cameras, machine vision, printed guide marks at lower layers).
Modeled at roughly 1/80 scale. Ver B of STLs have small improvements, but haven't been printed. Part with "top" in the name (upper body) should probably be printed upside down (as oriented in ver B). Also, I only printed one set of arm assy parts and one set of scissor assy parts because they're the same assy twice each. I printed full scale, which then requires M2 x 4mm and M2 x 6mm machine screws. I filed/trimmed as needed and ran a 2mm drill through the thru holes. smaller holes are sized for M2 machine screw to be essentially self-tapping. Probably much easier to build printed 1.5X and assembled with M3 x 6mm and M3 x 9/10mm screws.
https://youtu.be/qp7WvMQVddI
Other Building Printer Concept Models (NOT this thing)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2828296
There's two competing requirements: First, printing plastic in a large volume and second, with enough "resolution" to enable fine features like plumbing and conduit. The things here model two "sketches" -- rough ideas -- for how to accomplish that. Both models use a very large delta (to achieve large volume, easy set-up) combined with a small Cartesian (to achieve fine resolution and high nozzle movement speed). This is very preliminary, just a rough idea, no real details (filament or pellets? probably pellets. Hopper or feed tube? Probably hopper. Material ... maybe PVC? Approach for supports? Lots of options, no clear winner. Time? Probably way too long ,,, maybe better as large nozzle, no details and/or concrete printer).
Printed Building Concept Model (Not this thing)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2828645
Just a house in vertical sections to facilitate a rough simulation.
Thanks to Hans De Ridder and Joerg Schmit for the lowliner model, here: https://grabcad.com/library/mercedes-lowliner-1
Thanks to Saied Kabiri for the concrete mixer model, here: https://grabcad.com/library/concrete-mixer-machine-1