Add to guns and prosthetic hands something much bigger and heavier forming from the nozzle of a 3D printer buildings printed out of concrete. <\/p>\n
Partially funded by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation Countour Crafting is trying to develop 3D printed buildings using concrete. Company founder Behrokh Khoshnevis is a professor and director of Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California. <\/p>\n
Concrete printers would be able to build a 2,500-square-foot building within a single day, according to Khoshnevis. <\/p>\n
For the military, that means soldiers deploying to a remote location with little or no infrastructure could be operating out of permanent structures pretty soon after a combat engineer unit arrived with printers and material aboard a C-17. <\/p>\n
Related: Navy Rail Gun Showing Promise <\/p>\n
Essentially, building via printer would work just like any computer assisted manufacturing program. But instead of a robotic tap and die machine turning out parts according to a program, it would be an oversized printer following programmed schematics to lay down, layer by layer, a building, including outside and interior walls, spaces for doors and windows and all electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning conduits, according to Khoshnevis website. <\/p>\n
In avideo of a presentation he made last yearKhoshnevis says the machines he is working with now are capable of printing out concrete walls able to bear a compressive stress of 10,000 pounds per square inch. According to the Portland Concrete Association, which represents concrete manufacturers nationwide, conventional concrete has a psi of 7,000 or less. <\/p>\n
Anything above that, up to 14,500 psi, is considered high strength. <\/p>\n
Building construction is about the only thing that is not automated today, Khoshnevis says. At the same time it kills about 10,000 people a year and injures about 400,000. <\/p>\n
Given the history of U.S. military and related missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Khoshnevis observations on other aspects of conventional construction should also have meaning to the Pentagon. <\/p>\n
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\nNavy reveals next big project<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"