In Russia, you can list the companies that are developing construction 3D printing on the fingers of one hand. The other day, Tomsk Polytechnic University announced that first-year student Semyon Kyzyngashev (Innovation Studies) received a million rubles from the Innovation Promotion Fund to launch a startup for the construction of individual housing and small architectural forms using 3D printing.
In the accelerator of the university, the relevance of the project, its economics and the effectiveness of the application of the technical solution were checked. One of the features of the project was the ability to customize the design of future houses at the request of the customer. The student also intends to use glow-in-the-dark lum concrete as a decorative element in print, which no one in Russia has done before.
“The results of the research conducted in the accelerator turned out to be good, and I began to continue working with this project. In Russia, construction 3D printing is not so popular yet, now there are only three large companies developing in this direction. However, more than 1000 objects have already been printed in our country using this method. In addition, the development of additive technologies is supported at the highest level in our country. Therefore, in the near future, this direction will become quite popular,” Semyon said.
According to Semyon, it is now aimed at the individual housing market – buildings no more than two floors high and up to 100 square meters in size. These will be ready-made turnkey houses, made taking into account the preferences of the customer.
The construction industry’s adoption of 3D printing has been hitting the headlines. The Economist announced, in its understated way, in June 2017, “3D printing and clever computers could revolutionize construction,” and the CNN website earlier that year posed the question, “Will the world’s next megacity drip out of a 3D printer?” As the headlines suggest, the media excitement has been due far more to the technology’s potential than to its current record of accomplishments. The technology is getting there, but it’s not there yet.
The construction industry has traditionally been very conservative—slow to innovate and unsuccessful at boosting productivity. Many companies, however, have recently embarked on a makeover, specifically by exploiting digital technologies. (See The Transformative Power of Building Information Modeling, BCG Focus, March 2016.) The innovations so far have occurred mainly in the early and late phases—design and engineering, and operations and maintenance—rather than in the actual construction phase. But that phase too will soon see some drastic changes.
The elusive productivity boost will finally happen, thanks to building information modeling (BIM) and other collaboration tools, and construction sites will be modernized dramatically by digital fabrication technologies—bricklaying and tile-laying robots, for example, automated cutting, milling, and assembly of timbers; a digitized supply chain; automated prefabrication. And 3D printing.
Eventually, 3D printing will become a common or even standard feature in the fabrication process. The timeline and details remain uncertain. For almost a decade now, researchers have been investigating and refining techniques for 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, in construction. Several specialist companies have emerged, and several large established companies—not just construction firms but also manufacturers of building materials—have started investing in earnest.
There is a strong sense of anticipation. But several issues first need to be resolved: how ready the market really is; how ready the industry is to embrace rather than resist the creative-disruptive force that 3D printing represents; how ready the technology itself is; and how companies should best leverage the technology and adapt to it.
A Natural Fit for Construction
Before we address these tricky questions, it’s worth taking a closer look at what 3D printing in construction involves.
The term 3D printing refers to the production of physical objects layer-by-layer by an automated and usually computer-controlled machine. The machine, most often guided by digital 3D models, either melts metal or powdered solids or ejects liquid or semiliquid materials. The technology provides for a wide range of applications—from surgical implants to spare parts for cars to lightweight structures for aerospace projects.
Such versatility is due to three main factors: the variety of suitable materials (notably, polymers, metals, ceramics, and mortar or concrete); the almost limitless freedom of design; and the ability to fabricate complex shapes onsite or offsite, flexibly and inexpensively. Add to those characteristics the power of automated and autonomous production, and you have a near-perfect match for the construction industry.
