Using 3D printers to construct concrete houses is eco-friendly and very efficient, so it’s a real shame it is not yet used more widely. However, there are a few people making real breakthroughs in this field. One such is Nikita Chen-yun-tai, an engineer from Russia, who has recently built a 3D printer called Apis-Cor. This printer looks a lot like a tower crane with a printing nozzle on the end, and it can be positioned in the middle of the building being constructed and used to work outward.
The Apis-Cor printer also has no railings, or other hard to configure add-on so it can’t be moved around very easily. Yet it is still highly efficient, since it can build roughly 2067 sq ft (192 sq m) of a building from a single point, with virtually no height limitations. From the point of view of sustainability this machine is also very efficient, since it doesn’t leave any construction waste, and only needs eight kilowatts of energy to do its job.
The machine is also very light weight and can be set up quickly and easily. Judging from the pictures, it puts out a sort of concrete truss. The components can either be placed horizontally, or they can be stacked up one on top of another. A single Apis-Cor printer can cover an area of 630 sq ft (58 sq m), which is quite impressive.
Furthermore, the Apis-Cor can eliminate a lot of errors associated with traditional concrete construction, while at the same time eliminating a number of environmental and safety hazards. In fact, it can be used to construct a building in just one day, which is truly astounding. A machine like this could well revolutionize the construction process, not to mention the level of impact it would make if it were used in the developing world.
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