I think what's exciting about the future
of 3D printing is that we don't know
where this is going.
It's giving creative license to designers to
say, "Come up with whatever you may."
And when they see this their eyes go crazy
and they're like, "Oh my gosh!
Anything is possible."
Just conceived a world where everything is done
three-dimensionally so you hand over a
digital model to the contractor and you
don't have endless amounts of paperwork
that follows behind you anymore.
We're inventing a new way to build
Branch Technology is a company that is
freeform 3D printing and what we've done
is combined 3D printing with
conventional construction materials to
enable a new way to construct buildings
or other large-scale elements.
The idea for this came up with how can you use 3D
printing as a scaffold for normal
construction materials and how could you
add those into a 3D printed matrix.
So that's where the initial idea started.
One of the things with just the matrix
that we produce is carbon
fiber-reinforced ABS plastic and it
solidifies right when you draw and we
use a big robot as our movement mechanism.
We've tested some small pieces
one in particular weighed four ounces
but it supported 1,300 pounds on four ounces.
When you begin to mix that with
these other materials it becomes a
composite effect such that a piece that
was about the size of concrete block
weighing 28 ounces only containing just spray
foam and the matrix that supported 6,000
pounds. So that doesn't even include
the concrete. It's three times as strong as
wood stud construction. When you can
engineer geometry you can make it have
engineered results to resist wind, water,
a hurricane blast... and when you can also
engineer the materials that are a part
of that then you make something that's
specific for a certain use. When you
begin to apply 3D printing into that, it
allows so many different possibilities
and that computer aided design begins to
translate directly into how we
construct  a building.
We had gone out and started direct
marketing to architecture firms.
They said, "Oh my goodness! We can create
something amazing." We received that
commission to produce this open-air
children's pavilion in Cheekwood
Botanical Gardens in Nashville.
So the interaction between Branch
Technology and us was all through the
computer, so we could tweak the
angles. We could tweak the different
construction constraints of the exterior envelope.
The organic structures that we
can create and then have printed are so
different from what you would build
drawing lines on a piece of paper.
We as architects think in three dimensions, but
people who we work with don't always
necessarily think that way and so it
allows us to take these ideas in our
head and make it something real. People
can look at it, move it around, and see what
it is that we were trying to draw in
two dimensions before.
The way we got to using robots is
looking at how you can freeform 3D print
and with traditional CNC there's
limitations of the build volume and
orientations. Inherent to a six-axis or
seven-axis robot is the ability to do
amazing flexibility on the orientations--
things that no other mechanism can
really produce that type of geometric flexibility.
The reason why KUKA popped up
initially was the they were really
leading the pack on research and
development into new robotic means and
methods. They were the only one in the
world that I know of that makes a mobile
robotic platform that has sub millimeter
accuracy. We initially needed about an
eighth of an inch and so robotic
precision of point zero six millimeters
of positional accuracy was way beyond
what we initially needed. We don't
necessarily know what people are going
to come to us with and so we wanted to
have the capacity to do pretty much anything.
What you see behind me is the largest
freeform 3D printer in the world,
giving it a print envelope of 25 feet
wide by 58 feet long and we've never run
into a constraint on space so we can
produce most anything that anybody comes up with.
When you can think systemically about
how we create a building and can
integrate geometries and materials in
different configurations it opens up
all kinds of possibilities for very creative thinking.
Whatever you want to do!
