RESEARCH

PRESENTATION
3D Printing in Construction: Growth, Benefits,
and Challenges
Keshav Mathur-21107049
Pulkit Dhiman-21107055
Dheeraj Sharma-21107025
Shikhar Saxena-21107023
Aditya Kundu-21107003
 ABSTRACT
Additive manufacturing (AM) has been gaining popularity in
various industries due to its flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and
the ability to produce complex geometries. The construction
industry has also shown interest in AM due to the potential to
reduce construction time and waste while improving the
efficiency and sustainability of the built environment. This
paper provides a comprehensive review of the state of the art
in 3D printing in construction, including the different AM
methods, applications, and challenges faced in the field. The
paper also presents a case study on the use of 3D printing in a
construction project, highlighting the benefits and limitations
of the technology. The review concludes with
recommendations for future research to advance the use of AM
in the construction industry.
INTRODUCTION
3D printing, also known as Additive
Manufacturing (AM), is a computer-controlled
process that creates three-dimensional shapes
by layering materials.
It has become more popular and affordable
since the 2000s, leading to its use in a wide
range of industries such as product design,
aerospace engineering, and medical
applications.
The development of 3D printing systems for the
construction industry, called 'construction 3D
printers', has also emerged.
INTRODUCTION CONTD.
The process involves creating a 3D digital
model using CAD or a 3D scanner, which is then
read by the printer to lay down successive
layers of printing medium to create the item.
3D printing allows for almost any shape to be
created and can produce multiple components
simultaneously, use multiple materials and
colours, and increase accuracy through a
subtractive process.
However, some materials like metal can be
expensive to print, making it more cost-effective
to print a mold and use that to create the item.
 HISTORY OF 3D PRINTING IN CONSTRUCTION

The roots of 3D printing date back to the mid-1980s, when stereolithography

(SLA) was first conceived. SLA uses a high-powered laser to turn a liquid resin
into a solid material, creating a product from the ground up in a layer-by-layer
fashion. Initially, 3D printing was mainly used to quickly and accurately create
prototype parts. As additive processes improved, however, its viable uses
began to expand. Before the adoption of building information modeling
(BIM), 3D printing was even used by architectural firms to build scale models.
Over the years, 3D printing has been utilized for ambitious initiatives and
projects in construction, including 3D-printedwalls, full canal houses,
mansions, and fully functioning commercial buildings like the Dubai Future
Foundation's Office of the Future. The 2,700-square foot building was built by
a large 3D printer measuring 120 x 40 x 20 feet, and it took just 17 days to
construct. Today, the 3D printing construction market is rapidly growing and
is expected to reach $1.5 billion by 2024.
 THE BENEFITS OF 3D PRINTING IN CONSTRUCTION:
WASTE REDUCTION
Worldwide construction waste currently totals
more than 1 billion tons each year, and according
to Construction Dive, this number is expected to
double by 2025. While 3D printing won’t be able
to solve all of the construction waste problems, it
can help. This is largely because 3D printing is an
additive manufacturing process that only uses as
much material as is necessary for creating a
structure. When paired with other waste-reducing
processes and building methods like
prefabrication and lean construction, the potential
of a waste-zero building seems all the more likely..
SPEED
3D printing has already shown that it can build a
home or building from the ground up in a matter of
days. That’s a significantly faster timeframe than
conventional construction, which can take months
and years to fully construct a commercial building.
According to Marco Vonk, Marketing Manager at
Saint-Gobain Weber Beamix, “You save about 60%
of the time on the jobsite and 80% in labor.”
 THE BENEFITS OF 3D PRINTING IN CONSTRUCTION:
DESIGN FREEDOM
3D printing has already shown that it can build
a home or building from the ground up in a
matter of days. That’s a significantly faster
timeframe than conventional construction,
which can take months and years to fully
construct a commercial building. According to
Marco Vonk, Marketing Manager at Saint-
Gobain Weber Beamix, “You save about 60% of
the time on the jobsite and 80% in labor.”
REDUCE HUMAN ERROR
According to OSHA, more than 5,000 workers are
killed on the job each day. Because construction
would be more programmable and automated,
worker injuries and fatalities would likely
decrease if 3D printing was incorporated onto
the jobsite.
 CHALLENGES OF 3D PRINTING IN CONSTRUCTION:
QUALITY CONTROL
Weather already has the potential to slow
construction progress, but issues with Mother
Nature may be amplified with 3D printing. The
weather, environmental factors and more are
all conditions that could make 3D printing in
commercial construction more of a bust than a
boom. Furthermore, quality control in
construction can already be a tricky matter. If
not constantly monitored and overseen by real
humans, quality in 3D printing could end up
being a very expensive mess.
REGULATIONS
One drawback that might not immediately come
to mind is the regulation of 3D printing. While
regulation in 3D printing has made the news
cycle recently, it still hasn’t fully impacted the
construction industry. However, there’s also the
liability that may come with using printers rather
than humans to perform certain construction
tasks. Currently, there’s much uncertainty in this
aspect of 3D printing in construction. Until laws
and regulations are clearly defined, it’s unlikely
that 3D printing will make too much of a mark in
the construction sector.
 CHALLENGES OF 3D PRINTING IN CONSTRUCTION:
LABOR SHORTAGE
The construction industry is increasing with
full-pace because of the skilled workers in high
demand. The only issue with this is that there
are not many workers available for 3D printing.
Besides the labor shortage, 3D printing also
needs more specific skills that may pull from a
fewer group of candidates. The construction
labor shortage is quite an issue, as it is not easy
to find qualified workers for employing 3D
printing environments for construction. And, all
this could feel more challenging for the future.
HIGH COSTS
The high cost is the major challenge in the 3D
printing industry. Even the costs involved with
logistics involve the use of large 3D printers for
working at the construction sites. The 3D printers
are very costly and their upfront purchase cost
may not include maintenance or materials.
Currently, it is quite difficult for construction
experts to justify 3D printing costs over various
technological advantages.
 WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TECHNOLOGIES

Robotic arm extruders

One of them is a robotic arm extruder. This
technology is called contour crafting. It is
fairly similar to how FDM desktop 3D
printers work. The rails are arranged to let
the robotic arm move, and within the limits
of the rails, the arm will build the house layer
by layer by extruding concrete material from
the nozzle. This is the most popular 3D
printing technology used to build XL
structures.
 WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TECHNOLOGIES

Sand 3D printing
The following 3D technique is similar to
industrial 3D Printing such as SLS or Jet
Fusion. The pioneer who tested it was the
Italian architect Enrico Dini, who built his D-
Shape 3D printer. The machine spreads a
layer of sand powder, then hardens the
structure’s shape with a binder. This is
precisely how our metal 3D printers work
too!
 WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TECHNOLOGIES

Metal technology
Last but not least, for structures such as
bridges, which have to withstand more
stress, Dutch company MX3D developed
Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM).
The team described the technology: “we
combined an industrial robot with a welding
machine to turn it into a 3D printer that
works with our software”. The robot allows
for 3D printing metal structures in 6-axes.
3D PRINTED BUILDINGS
Europe's first 3D-printed residential house
The 3D Print Canal House was a construction project.
The first residential building in Europe and the CIS, constructed using
the 3D printing construction technology, was the home in Yaroslavl
(Russia) with the area of 298.5 sq. meters. The walls of the building were
printed by the company SPECAVIA in December 2015. 600 elements of
the walls were printed in the shop and assembled at the construction
site. After completing the roof structure and interior decoration, the
company presented a fully finished 3D building in October 2017. Europe's first 3D-printed residential house
Dutch and Chinese demonstration projects are slowly constructing 3D-
printed buildings in China, Dubai and the Netherlands. Using the effort
to educate the public to the possibilities of the new plant-based building
technology and to spur greater innovation in 3D printing of residential
buildings. A small concrete house was 3D-printed in 2017.
The Building on Demand (BOD), the first 3D printed house in Europe, is
a project led by COBOD International for a small 3D printed office hotel
in Copenhagen, Nordhavn area. As of 2018, the building stands fully
Craft Fence by ConcreteFlow
completed and furbished.
3D PRINTED BRIDGES

In Spain, the first pedestrian bridge printed in 3D in the world (3DBRIDGE)

was inaugurated 14 December 2016 in the urban park of Castilla-La
Mancha in Alcobendas, Madrid. The 3DBUILD technology used was
developed by ACCIONA, who was in charge of the structural design,
material development and manufacturing of 3D printed elements. The
bridge has a total length of 12 meters and a width of 1.75 meters and is
printed in micro-reinforced concrete. Architectural design was done by
Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC).
The 3D printer used to build the footbridge was manufactured by D-Shape.
The 3D printed bridge reflects the complexities of nature's forms and was
developed through parametric design and computational design, which
allows to optimize the distribution of materials and allows to maximize the
structural performance, being able to dispose the material only where it is
needed, with total freedom of forms. The 3D printed footbridge of The First 3D printed bridge in Spain
Alcobendas represented a milestone for the construction sector at
international level, as large scale 3D printing technology has been applied
in this project for the first time in the field of civil engineering in a public
space
CLAY PRINTING

The Tecla as of 2021.

Video showing the eco-house and its construction
In April 2021, the first prototype 3D printed house made out of clay, Tecla, was completed. The low-carbon housing was printed by
two large synchronized arms from a mixture of locally sourced soil and water as well as fibers from rice husks and a binder. Such
buildings could be highly cheap, well-insulated, stable and weatherproof, climate-adaptable, customizable, get produced rapidly,
require only very little easily learnable manual labor, mitigate carbon emissions from concrete, require less energy, reduce
homelessness, help enable intentional communities such as autonomous, autark eco-communities, and enable the provision of
housing for victims of natural disasters as well as – via knowledge- and technology-transfer to local people – for migrants to Europe
near their homes, including as an increasingly relevant political option. It was built in Italy by the architecture studio Mario Cucinella
Architects and 3D printing specialists WASP. The building's name is a portmanteau of "technology" and "clay".
Data and projections indicate an increasing relevance of buildings that are both low-cost and sustainable, notably that, according to
a 2020 UN report, building and construction are responsible for ~38% of all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, that, partly due
to global warming, migration crises are expected to intensify in the future and that the UN estimates that by 2030, ~3 billion people or
~40% of the world's population will require access to accessible, affordable housing. Disadvantages of printing with clay-mixtures
include height-limitations or horizontal space requirements, initial costs and size of the non-mass-produced printer, latencies due to
having to let the mixture dry with current processes, and other problems related to the novelty of the product such as their
connection to plumbing systems.
FUTURE OF 3D PRINTING IN CONSTRUCTION

Does 3D printing technology have a real staying

power in the construction industry? From whatever
we have seen, the promise is very strong.
It’s all possible as long as the firms like Saint-Gobain
and BAM start innovating and pushing the
boundaries even more.
Overall, the 3D printing potential is too good to
ignore. While various industries may not reach a
point to use this technology, it’s just a matter of time
before the technology improves and advances with
time.
All in all, 3D printing is a viable solution that aims to
offer certain major benefits in environmental
friendliness and cost savings for the building’s
future.
REFERENCES

Construction 3D printing - Wikipedia

3D Printing in Construction: Current Status, Implementation Hindrances, and Development
Agenda (hindawi.com)
3D-printed concrete: applications, performance, and challenges: Journal of Sustainable Cement-
Based Materials: Vol 9, No 3 (tandfonline.com)
(PDF) 3D Printing Technology in Construction Sector: A Short Review (researchgate.net)