3D Construction Printing: Apis Cor

By Ashish Singh Dhanjal|Updated : August 12th, 2020

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3D Construction Printing refers to various techniques and technologies that basically uses 3D printing to fabricate buildings or construction components. The other technologies in use are additive construction, Autonomous Robotic Construction System, Large Scale Additive Manufacturing, Freeform Construction etc.

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Overview of 3D Printing:

3D printing is the way of creating three dimensional solid objects layer by layer with the help of machines. As reference to normal printing, it is usually the 2D things that can be spread out on a paper but 3D printing is what is emerging nowadays. A particular patter can be set and feed into the computer through which it automatically follow up a certain pathway for printing. 3D printing is a part of additive manufacturing where an object is created by adding material layer by layer. It allows designer to create complex parts of machines, turbines, cars, aircraft etc at low costs and fraction of time of standard means like forging, molding and sculpting.

Applications of 3D Printing:

Education Industry: In education industry it can be used to study several objects by creating their prototype through 3D printing. Companies like Makerbot offers courses in 3D printing applications for educators as well as students. Students can duplicate objects like fossils, historical artifacts etc for proper study without damaging delicate collections.
Prototyping and Manufacturing: Usually prototyping process take lot of time to create prototypes, but with the help of 3D printing we can easily make a number of prototypes and then send these prototypes to manufacturing units so that a bulk is produced in no time.
Medicine: By 3D printing, we can create essential organs, surgical tools, creating patient specific models such that the surgeons then can plan actual surgeries by initially attempting it on 3D models.
Construction: This is nowadays gaining popularity as construction has not changed over the years, and we are still relying on tightening wooden pieces together with nuts and bolts or assembling bricks or blocks which takes a lot of time and skilled labour.

As a result of this, we are not able to meet the demands of the present i.e growing demands for houses across the globe.

Apis Cor is a response to that as it uses 3D printing machines which actually prints houses and buildings. It is an American company which actually prints buildings which have a lot of benefits over regular construction activities. We can build impossible structures through 3D printing as there is actually a robot (machine) in which we need to feed specific programs and then it actually made buildings according to the program. This method has also huge impact on cost-cutting measures as we donot require much skilled labours and also when there is a time-constraint we can use this technology for the betterment of construction activities.

The various benefits of this technology is reduction in costs and waste, faster construction speed, reduction of accidents, generation of complex architectural shapes, etc. This technology is in great demand and offering many benefits to its users. This technology reduces 3-4 weeks activities to just 3-4 days. Also, this technology reduce environment impact as less waste is produced.

Advancements:

It is estimated that 3D printing construction market will see a boom i.e around 251% in the coming 7 to 8 years.
The first 3D printed commercial building, according to Guinness World Records which is around 20 feet high, 120 feet long and 40 feet wide now houses the office of the Dubai Future Academy.

Also, there are claims that the first 3D printed house was build in 2018 which is a four-bedroom house around 1,022 feet property which is printed in just 54 hours but it take more than four more months for the constructors to add windows, doors and roof to it.
The first 3D printed bridge is build across a stream in Castilla-La Mancha Park in Alcobendas, Madrid which is around 39 feet in length and 5.7 metres in width.