The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
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The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
#2At first I was a little shocked it took 6 months to print (weld if you like). But thinking about it, it doesn't seem that long for such a complicated design.
Great work!
Re: The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
#3Such beauty, such aery reduction to the basics...
Re: The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
#4Just beautiful. The ability of 3D printing, not just to automate a traditional construction process, but to enable radically different designs is going to create a whole new style of architecture. Many of the old constraints don't apply and the human imagination is given a freer reign. There's still that pesky law of gravity that must be respected, but otherwise this offers a remarkable freedom.
Re: The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
#5At first I was a little shocked it took 6 months to print (weld if you like). But thinking about it, it doesn't seem that long for such a complicated design. Great work!
It doesn't matter if it's complicated. Probably they can't do it faster because they have to melt so much steel.
Re: The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
#6I recommend the video, it includes some footage of the printing process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STAHy6hTP14
Unlike traditional 3d metal printing, which works by laying down a powder which is then baked in an oven to fully sinter it, this bridge seems to be constructed by directly welding additional metal to the existing structure.
Here's a fun DIY attempt at the same kind of idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFXniBbgbw0 (and, if you're into home machining, almost all of the other videos on his channel are very enjoyable too).
Re: The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
#7What was the new type of steel they used?
Re: The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
#8What was the new type of steel they used?
I took that to mean that it is not hot-rolled steel, cold-rolled steel, cast iron, or any other traditional method of converting a lump of iron ore into a usable piece of steel.
It's 1000 km of welding wire welded together. It counts as a new "type" of steel depending on how flexible you are with what counts as different "types".
Re: The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
#9Just beautiful. The ability of 3D printing, not just to automate a traditional construction process, but to enable radically different designs is going to create a whole new style of architecture. Many of the old constraints don't apply and the human imagination is given a freer reign. There's still that pesky law of gravity that must be respected, but otherwise this offers a remarkable freedom.
I suspect that the time and cost involved in non-trivial structures will limit any real experimentation with non-traditional designs. It might be trivial to throw away a kilogram of plastic on a failed prototype, but the same doesn't extrapolate up to experiments with bridges.
Re: The First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
#10The article is light on technical details but they apparently converted a normal industrial welding robot into a giant FDM machine that deposits 1-3 KG per hour per nozzle. Really interesting. From the photos it looks like the layers don't even have to be parallel to each other.