Topic: Scale Effects – Challenges for Sustainable Manufacturing in Architecture
Speaker: Bruno Knychalla
Oganization: Additive Tectonics
An exploratory discourse into the intricate dynamics of architectural 3D printing, with a particular emphasis on large scale particle bed 3D printing. The talk spotlights the hurdles that lie in transforming these technologies from a conceptual stage to an industrial scale. It unpacks the myriad challenges encountered in the usage of alternative binders and sustainable materials like wood, clay, and other biomaterials in additive manufacturing. Central to this discussion are the critical parameters that come into play when scaling technology
for wider application, shedding light on the complex realities faced when bringing these innovations to life in actual architectural projects. This talk is a deep dive into the practical, economic, and sustainability considerations that form the bedrock of architectural innovation, aimed at navigating the turbulent waters of scale and sustainability in the architecture industry.
Led by scientists of the Technical University of Darmstadt, BE-AM | Built Environment Additive Manufacturing connects researchers and users interested in 3D printing in construction. The platform spans architecture, civil engineering and manufacturing automation.
Annual highlights are the BE-AM | Exhibition and the BE-AM | Symposium at Formnext in Frankfurt/Main. This year’s exhibitors and speakers will showcase and discuss work from 9 companies in the industry, 10 universities and 2 research institutions. The event is hosted by the Formnext fair in Frankfurt, and organized by Prof. Ulrich Knaack, Prof. Oliver Tessmann, Dr.-Ing. Philipp Rosendahl, Dr. Nadja Gaudillière-Jami, Christin Gandyra, Emanuel Nowak and Malcolm Unger from the Technical University of Darmstadt.
Contact: be-am@dg.tu-darmstadt.de
BE-AM: https://be-am.de
DDU: https://www.dg.architektur.tu-darmsta…
ISM+D: https://www.ismd.tu-darmstadt.de
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Yeah hey um I’m Bruno kunala um I’m founder of additive tectonics which is um yeah basically a spin-off of a big um three printing company called fit a um we founded this company in 2020 um in the middle of the pandemic and it was actually quite good because
We could it was kind of like a small enclave and we could really focus on doing a construction startup in in um additive manufacturing yeah and because we have this big Mothership behind us we basically have a lot of experience in 3D printing and yeah I will explain a bit
What the problems are when you try to scale this up and if you try to make it construction relevant and then also construction brings in this these problems of sustainability that I will talk a bit about it but one of the big problems that we have is actually that um yeah two do
Additive manufacturing you kind of have to work digital and the construction sector is the second least digitized sector in the world but we managed to get um to be better than Agriculture and hunting which is pretty good um but it still looks pretty Grim um for us especially if you want to also
Work with AI Technologies and these kind of things you kind of have to be digital to um start but in Germany where we are right now um which is also a big hub for 3D printing um it doesn’t look as bad like here we are at least in the in the
Green Field um uh here but we have another problem and that is that the government is not at all um digitized and this brings us also big problems actually bigger problems than the construction thing because we are actually no construction we are additive manufacturing that goes into construction and this is quite exciting
Um so what we do is uh we work on developing the future of construction architectural 3D printing and I hope we all agree that it’s at least part of the future of construction and we do this by actually I’m putting um additive manufacturing at the at the center of
Process design and product design I will talk a bit about what that means so it’s not just about the 3D printing part of it you have to also design the processes before and after to be able to make products um and of course you have to design the products because an architect
Right now a classically trained architect can’t do this um and we do this in an environment that faces big issues we talked about this a lot so I will be quite quick um yeah we generate huge amounts of waste we don’t have a lot of people on the construction side
At least in Germany like the people are and people don’t want to really go into this environment anymore and then when you start to digitize this thing it becomes complex quite quickly so methods are lacking to actually bring this complexity from the digital realm into into the Physical Realm and then also
Through modernism um we we basically ended up with a pretty monotonous way of doing architecture that U wasn’t um it hasn’t been done um in in other styles before so these are the key issues and we also have to kind of emancipate away from modernism to actually be able to um
To apply these Technologies in a in a correct way and we at additive tectonics we do it in a CO um design cycle it’s kind of something that I that I caught off in in stutgart where I studied um under arimas and um so in our team we we
Are very interdisiplinary so we see it from we have the computation engineering the design and Manufacturing but we also develop construction systems for example with um with Autodesk and also our own material systems and the cinetics which in this case means how our machines um communicate with each other what type of
Silos you need to actually be able to industrially additive manufacturer on this scale and we need to do this because additive manufacturing is super comp complex like if you look at all of the parameters that go into um that you kind of have to control to make a
Manufacture part um you see that these types of these um parameters are very very tough to handle especially by only one um um by only one profession so this is why we assembled a quite interdisciplinary team um and also pretty young team because um it is kind of a young
People’s discipline and you can see that uh we grew quite a lot so here you see 14 we actually a bit more and I’m super happy to to tell you that half of us is are actually here so if you have specific uh questions for specific topics I’m happy to also introduce you
All of the experts in these fields okay so what are we doing we actually focus on four main topics um Metals concrete or let’s say hydraulic binders and wood U so basically all the big um construction materials and of course automation and computation um I will just start with
With additive concrete and then we can talk a bit later about the the the other things um so aditive concrete fast it started um at T Munich where the selective cement activation technology was developed and um we had in a lab like a 50x 50x 50 kind of um SCA printer
And this technology works with mixing Aggregates and the binder inside a powder bed and then you just activate it by basically chatting an activator on this um on the particle bed and the interesting part here is that we can be quite precise um we can be up to
Millimeter precision and this is for like concrete or cement manufacturing pretty um pretty insane what was lacking was the size so we basically teamed up with a um construction um machine company and uh scaled up this machine so our print bed is uh 10 cubic M like 4 M
By 2 and A2 M by 1 M and it is the first and only type of its like it’s the it’s the only machine that exists in the world right now that that is that big that fast and can print with construction material because this is also important because you have binder
Ching Technologies right but most of them are not made to work with construction materials and if you then go into the route of getting a permit to build you need to kind of work with construction materials um and this machine is also super fast um we kind of range between 6 and 9
Hours for 10 cubic meters so um I will tell you later on Parts what this actually means um but one very important step I learn at T Munich is that three printing basically closes the digital chain so you can have a completely digital process um to make a part and
Put it into reality without having a big margin of error and and a lot of human interference so um disclosing the digit the digital chain is quite important if you want to bring your parts from Bim out into reality or from a computational framework into reality okay so here you
See a um prototype of a Assad system um that we developed for a project in ringburg and um this was supposed to be 3,000 sare meters of facade and it’s basically just a fancy shading and I don’t want to talk really about the architecture behind it I’m just super
Proud to say that um a thing like you could fabricate in 2 and a half hours and this makes um three printing suddenly become construction relevant because you have to calculate the costs up um to your machine capacity and only if you scale it up with speed and size
You actually able to be a real player in the construction field but for us for us it wasn’t really only about the the the aesthetic um possibilities that we have we also wanted to um integrate functions and we know this from three printing right uh our um volumetric designs our
Internal structures that help us kind of um steer the steer the um function of a construction element so we wanted to ball it all together to get multifunctional building elements and there we teamed up with t Munich and um de was telling a bit about it um I just
Want to show you the video and and talk a bit about it so um it was inspired by m Boer um who is um basically a modernist architect and designer and we for the first time wanted to see if we can really function functionally integrate um um building functions into
A into an element and you saw that we also analyzed like how the heat um is being transported through our elements and how we can actually use um these these structures inside of the element to to gain a benefit in in this case an insulation you have the
Um you have the solar potential of self share training and um a lot of other um interesting principles that that can be solved with additive manufacturing especially also the curvature and in my opinion it’s the first time that you can really see additive manufacturing being applied like a like a um prefabricated
Building element that has a certain Extra Value to it um yeah so in a new recent paper you can actually read on why we chose certain structures it has to do with also with our de powdering process because after the print basically this part gets taken out of
The out of the machine in a big box and then you have to suck out all of the unactivated material and you use this in the next in the next phase in the next print and this unactivated material is in these cells so we have to get it out
And it was the first time that something this big and this high res was actually printed in concrete like it’s standard Portland concrete and um there you have some problems with baking the material basically bakes inside and it’s really tough to get out so we are we are really
Working on this but you see that um in my opinion it’s already very convincing even though it was uh our first real prototype that we did in cement in standard Portland cement of course you could use other binders but we wanted to have something that’s very um
Available and we wanted to see if we are able to actually build an element that’s this size in one go so this element uh took nine hours to print this has to do with um the the compressed material and the water tends to tends to penetrate slower than than with other materials so
It’s actually our slowest print like we could also do this in 6 hours but with other materials and you see that in the back it’s it’s reinforced um yeah and of course we also did other projects this is an art project uh it’s it’s supposed to be a
Blood cell um and this is just the smallest piece we actually did a very I think five times as big piece um like this like these are the small projects that you kind of have to do to validate um your technology and then there I
Don’t know if you see where the 3D print is it’s quite hidden it’s these uh mushrooms that we there you also see a bit our our facility how it looks like the problem is right now that we are facing is that all of them broke um the mushroom broke the the
Blood cell broke also the big element broke and this has to do with um micr cracks that happen when you unpack these parts and this we we couldn’t we we could only know by doing it big so there are effects that happen um like you have
Microc cracks that make you be able to handle the part but as soon as it’s outside these micr cracks kind of tend to widen and big and then um the part fails so this is the stuff that we kind of right now try to figure out out like
Really going onto the going into projects and see if we are able to realize this project and learn from them and adopt them okay Portland cement pretty complicated um wood um So within with the last projects we developed our own printing material which is kind of expanded glass um from
Bottles that are that had their life cycle basically uh extended because these bottles normally just have five cycles and then they they are trashed and um we we basically use this old glass and or there are companies that make expanded glass out of them and we tailored the material together with
Cement to be able to get a 3D printed material out of it out of basically recycled glass bottles and Patrick did all of the material tailoring um gathered all of the data that we um that we had to get to actually know if we are
Able to print such a l such a large element with it but in this process we also noticed that we can do a process like this with a lot of different um materials so wood chippings break sand limestone blah a lot of possibilities and we like wow this is really something
Like you can use waste materials local materials from everywhere and print with them and make real construction elements in speeds that are relevant for construction but then reality hit again and uh we looked at our setup um that we developed during covid like basically you see these brutalist buildings are
Silos and they stand on sensors and you have a mixing um uh and um material um pumping uh station in the middle and it’s constantly supervised and if you you have to do it like this if you want to be if you want to do an industrial machine an industrial setup but then
Once you have it industrialized it’s pretty tough to react on all of these different materials because your Machinery might not be able to like all of the little chippings and different um sustainable materials that you want to work with so we had to focus and we
Focused on wood um so what you see here is a material that we call eonite Wood it’s a magnesium wood um hybrid uh basically you have you have Beachwood chippings inside and you bind them by using magnesium oxy cement and magnesium chloride the interesting part is that
You use this this binder this magnesium binder also as uh flammability retardant for wood like in German we call it SAU crout button um these plates are made of wood and uh you use these magnesium binders to actually um protect them from fire so our binder doesn’t just bind the
Wood it also makes it fireproof and we are right now elaborating the acoustic properties of them but it looks pretty good and the interesting thing is that if we fill the machine with acoustic plates like this where every plate could be different uh a plate like this 50 x
50 cm 2 and a half CM thick would be 40 seconds to fabricate so suddenly we are in a Range where additive manufacturing can be scaled and can be applied to construction okay um so technologically it’s possible the problem is that everybody comes to you and says let’s 3D
Print this let’s 3D print that let’s do an art project let’s um do something really crazy but this is not how you make money this is not sustainable so how um you can actually bring this power onto the streets is by making products products that need additive manufacturing where you actually develop
The whole process from the design to the um finished um um to the finished products yeah so we are we in the process of doing that I will I have to speed up a bit um and develop basically these These acoustic products but there’s of course a lot of other um
Potentials with this wood um with these wood products that need to be explored and if you want to do this if you want to help us making products out of three printed wood we are happy to work with you especially because this biomass can be doesn’t need to be Beachwood it can
Also be something that grows quick that harvests a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere okay let’s talk about Metal I really have to speed up um so an artist group approached us and wanted to do a big alar um project and they want to do it in whem and we together with our
Mother company we know how to do whem and it would have been five times the um costs that the artists expected so we came up with a different way um and used basically an SLS print and sprayed aluminium around it did a lot of material tests and
Um so basically it’s a it’s an interesting load case where um that’s kind of made up but kind of also made so that the that the structure um has a certain has a certain aesthetic and then there you see how we spray the aluminium around it the aluminium is there to
Really reinforce it like like we calculated the project just with the aluminium skin around it and then yeah we assembled it by hand and you see it’s a very complex puzzle like 60 um different pieces each individual and there you see the finished part in the church and it was actually um the
Cardinal marks came and um praised it I don’t know what’s in English that was quite interesting uh okay so the last topic is computation automation um I just tell you a story through a project it’s again an art project where we do fdm together with an artist called Peter
Lang he is um a landscape painter and he normally paints layered paintings like he makes very straight lines by snipping a a string on a on a Surface so we said we actually do the same thing you just have to learn how to model he didn’t
Want to learn how to model so we made him an VR interface where he could actually um paint his layers and um we made made a custom setup for Museum where you could color um on the go um these prints and would basically give give in the color code that he decided
Before in VR so he was 800 hours in VR and we printed 800 hours in hanova and actually it’s not just the coloring system for us for us it’s a way to actually make a new material on the fly like you could grade A material you could use two different materials and
You see that this is quite big and far was intense because we printed life in a museum which is which makes you ready for Industrial Fabrication okay but you see we overheated the material a bit to get an artistic finish but we work together
With a with a company to um also do it properly to make um products out of it we know how to color things so we use our wood material like the whole structure that you saw is basically a liin based um um uh polymer and we we
Write now develop a range of products for these people that you might know um yeah and we quite excited to kind of go in the range of products and uh of course we want to push architecture but to do a startup means you kind of have
To you have to start um selling things on a consistent level okay so we do very interesting stuff if you’re interested to follow us uh feel free to uh scan the code and yeah maybe if you have ideas for our new wood material I would be very excited to work together with
Experts in the field and I’m happy to be here thank you thank you very much are there any questions from the audence then I get to start with my question um you were talking a little bit about the the demonstration that the projects present we’re talking about
Ping arure my experience it is much about pushing adive manufacturing into architecture before you can do it the other way around I was wondering how you look at the projects you you work on how you choose them how you work on them in that of kind of using to push the
Technology further into the industry yeah um it’s a very good um question and it’s actually very tough to choose the right project because we also know that we kind of have to stand behind the projects especially in the beginning so a lot of projects we don’t
Show but we still want to do them to test it so we basically show the stuff that we like um but there are a lot of projects in the in the drawer where where we are not so uh happy about showing them but for sure it means um
Getting the right Architects to work with you um Architects that know about 3D printing and there are not so many especially in the established field so I’m counting on you guys thank you can you explain me why we saw the same project in the morning in a DFG
Basic research funded project and in the afternoon in Industrial Research yeah I can explain um so basically this technology comes out of T Munich like the sea technology the sea technology was developed at T Munich um but the machine development and the process development happens in
At um but of course it’s there are there are very crucial steps to scaling this up that a university has really troubles to research on and this is where we come in and um a university would not be able to have all of um or for now I don’t
Know maybe it changes now with this big funds that are coming into um but um yeah we work together with them to realize um to realize the project we also were part of the um of the papers that are being written and these types of things because there is a lot of
Knowledge that you get from scaling it up and universities tend to start small yeah and we are I think more unrig but more uh how do you say yeah we we we just do it and then we we we tend to First do it and then check
If it worked instead of over academicz a problem thank you uh there’s the question about your mushroom story so do you have any solution or you won any more or produce any more mushrooms so the mushroom was an art project um uh yeah we think we have a
Solution um but we first have to test it in small scale actually but we noticed these problems by scaling it up and um we are we will continue with with um Portland cement um from an academic point of view it might seem super simple like a super
Tiny problem that you can solve the problem is in an in industrial setup um each little Pro problem that you try to solve means a lot of costs a lot of extra costs and we are right now not sure if we can sustain the process how
It is right now and solve it so um yeah a lot has to do with the green state of the Portland cement like you basically you print it and then you leave it um 4 days in the in the powder bed but then you have to unpack it otherwise it dries
And gets cracks from drying so you have to hand you have to take it out of the of the bed in a green State and this is where the where the microcracks happen we think so um there are ways to solve it some have to do with fibers some have
To do with different post-processing methods but it’s five different solutions so we have to check