Concrete with 3D Printed Foam Forms

The latest 3D printing application?  Forming concrete. That’s according to a team at ETH Zurich who claims that construction with foam forms cuts concrete usage up to 70%. It also offers improved insulation properties. You can see a video about the process, below.


Typical concrete work relies on a form often made with wood, steel, or plastic. That’s easy to do, but hard to make complex shapes. However, if you can create complex shapes you can easily put material where it adds strength and omit material where it doesn’t carry load. Using a robotic-arm 3D print technique, the researchers can lay out prefabricated blocks of foam that create forms with highly complex shapes.


The foam elements go in a conventional wood form and are cast as usual with — in this case — high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete. The resulting structure is strong but lighter than a conventional concrete structure. The foam parts can be left in or removed at the end of the process.


The design required 12 different shapes and 24 individual elements. The 3D printing material is a type of mineral foam made from recycled materials.


We have seen 3D printing via robotic arm before. Of course, 3D printing structures is all the rage lately and we’ve seen it done with concrete many times.




Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.