Eco Friendly 3D Printed Concrete Alternative [Omlab]

i'm here at omlabs facility in arnhem the netherlands one of the most common questions i get about 3d printed concrete is about the environmental factors and there's all kinds of concerns like the sand or the amount of cement that's sometimes used in these very fast curing very buildable materials and so today we're going to take a look at one of the few promising solutions for bio-friendly eco-friendly material that would be more sustainable we're going to talk about some of the great possibilities and solutions with this technology from their founding team a couple from the netherlands this material they've developed looks and feels like concrete but it's actually made up of mostly calcium so they take this by-product from waste facilities and integrated into their material makes up around 90 percent of the material composition my name is margaret marchette and uh yeah we're onlop bio-based design and project studio here in arnhem in the netherlands we started um one half years ago and a year ago hoop invented the material prototype i'm holding in my hands now that's when it all started working on the circular and bio-based printing yeah we like to show the designers community and building community that you can make things with 100 respect to nature the material started as a bio-based material but we managed to make it completely circular too and the technique we use the 3d printing gives us the ability to make better and functional stuff objects but also use less material and amaze people more so they listen better and hear our story about how you can make objects that are really respecting nature yeah we have to move towards this and that's why we also share our knowledge about doing this yeah we're convinced that it can that the building building construction etc can be improved and be environmentally friendly but it's way easier to do it the old way old way and we have to experiment to do it a different way and that's what we're doing here the chalk that makes it hard and and white calcite yes calcite is carbon 3 oxide but it comes from a drinking water enhance so um the drinking water in in the netherlands are infiltrated in the earth and then pumped up again um to make drinking water but then there's a lot of chalk inside so they get it out and we use it now as a basic as the basic ingredient and then we put something in it's also very um circular and that's a toilet paper toilet paper that ended up in the in the sewage so it's really from the toilets and then um they sieve it out and this cellulose um is upgraded but then we use it in our substance to make it printable upgraded and sanitized i would imagine yeah it's sanitized yes yes it doesn't give much problem but you can yeah there's no yeah yeah but cellulose has also often a smell if you make it wet black paper if you make paper wet a little bit you can smell it um but then there's another ingredient that makes a little bit of a smell and that's the camira and camira is something new in in in it's an invention of a dutch professor from delft and he invented the process of making the sludge into a biopolymer from the sludge they they obtain a biopolymer that's also a binding exchange engine for me and it contains yeah a lot different bio polymers and um everything um aggregates or angers additives additives proteins proteins yes so it is it's organic um and this is something that creates the smell too but it gives the material uh um something very good um strength but also an um a balance in the material so we're working on this recipe uh more we really want to make it stronger better less smell and etc but it's printable so we started one year ago and being printable we can create things we like they look like concrete they are tested already the it is challenging the concrete already so yeah we're very glad that we managed to make more and more complex models like um things to for in nature now i'm working with a trainee who's going to do this final assignment here from the high school here um and the university of applied sciences in arnhem and we together designed this this sketch of a building block in which we integrate ventilation shafts and population shaft is like a tube it's moving in into the block and it creates an opening there where we need it now we go to design this building blocks more and more and to show a great wall in eindhoven last year we presented skill model of a tiny tiny house toilet toilet space and that was this size this fragment and then we heard very often the question is it concrete that's such an interesting question to find an answer to that we yeah that we developed a whole project and cooperation with companies printing companies a concrete company etc to uh to find that answer yeah is um doing much of the through research in literature and and and what you were doing um and and applications yeah yes and i'm doing the more the research on the working floor in the workshop um and try to find the experts to together make the 3d prints possible and recipe better the printing with this material and we hope to give examples um in which companies that are three concrete printers and think of um yes that's what what we want to because it's much much better than than printing concrete yeah but the challenge for us now is to manage disadvantages of this past to compensate them with technique and i'm working on it that maybe you know it about rhino 3d and grasshopper you can manage to code the form and then control the printer even better and we are now trying to find a way to make it make the form more complex but without losing control of the paste and um you can show that with this corner and thanks to to techniques like like grasshopper and and the good slicer technique you can use other materials complete printers are often taking the escape to use a very fast hardening mortar and that's something that uses a lot of more chemical ingredients that are not respecting nature so there are other ways to solve this problem we have to put more effort in in finding a solution to this and one of the things we use is cellulose or yeah this this cellulose is an uh resell um yeah i'll get the other uh ingredients yeah it's this is a very fine one i have to do some experiments with this yeah it's old toilet paper yes it's fine fine one and this is the [Music] the less fine one it's all from drinking water yes and then the cellulose and this is alpinate alcohol is binding stuff they also use it in food processing and medical applications but also in industry like carpentry et cetera and this is the carmia the dutch invention with biopolymers it has a different um qualities this material yes it's quite dark and smelling i always see this whole process of mixing as something we are in the in the beginning with serial mixing um is comparable with the the development of concrete and paper and i think we need a lot of time more to develop this with these ingredients into something really strong but it's a start and we need a lot of years maybe but in one year we achieve to make this complex things so i'm encouraged to to go on this is our mixer it's um from clay technique so we put the drying stuff in this and then we mix it until [Music] the right mix you add water and the camina and then we put it in our cartridges we use in the printer if you enlarge this we have to make this a lot bigger but this we're going to start with in summer together with other companies but then this is a good start we have control we write protocol to mix this and to have a constant quality of the material we made a stool a stool to show people that you can sit on it after it has been printed we received the award winner of the public of the price of the public the public so yeah people are very interested in this now we're working on two directions you can make this material very strong and resistant and you can build with it but on the other hand we're working on a recipe that is interesting for nature in another way we can make this recipe that it is biodegradable too so we can make biodegradable complex objects that are interesting for plants and animals and that's what we're going to show on an exhibition next week this one this is a small object like a rock you find on the on the pavement but we want to enlarge it maybe between the edited manufacturing by rolling up a rubber track with a caterpillar a caterpillar yes with a robot printed iron on it and then go into nature and print it five meters in diameter that's the idea that's the idea so yes and then it will give nutrition seeds and chalk to the nature industries is changing the the earth a lot so it needs a lot of chalk and this will help the environment to become better yeah and this is the same recipe of which we published last year and which we used for the for the small space so in the meantime we developed it further but this is the biodegradable one and non-coated it's not coated just the the it releases the the calcite the chalk very slowly infill here and see all the the parts the printer did run but this is something normal 3d concrete printers don't like they don't like to make this and they won't don't like to stop printing and then start again they even a lot of them can't manage it um so we need um a advanced 3d content printer and it already happens but there are a few who know how to do it and the other thing i would like to develop is non-planner printing so we can use all the the advanced techniques to make it even better so the past is under control right now and now i'm on the on the moment of making the printing software better and controlling it even further this is something another direction we are trying to engineer and this is um a design for um acoustic panel we'd like to cover a big [Music] wall with these kind of forms acoustic panels have two functions to spread the sound and to absorb sound so they reflect it in different directions then you have less reverb but the other thing is to absorb it and then you have to um fill holes with um [Music] uh with it with a damping material there are a lot of materials from recycling also from cloth and and etc to put in and then have absorption in it so this form is one of them and it's inspired by the sewage sewage sites um we can give you an example so we searching for a forum but there are a lot of possibilities and you see or so that these forums all or start stop problems we we managed no problem this is another example or this is the material we put in this is the absorbing material and it's designed by uh rick rick and we developed it together to uh yeah we're working on on printing it in big size you'd like to make studies in plastic and then enlarge it so yeah it's also pla of course you don't like other plastics the thing about this material is that it needs to cure by evaporating water and that's something we have to solve a little bit more and the thing we're working on right now is to print it on a laser cut tablet sheet to be able to ventilate it a lot now working on drying it with infrared and infrared um with a high frequency so it enters the objects a lot and then it dries even better without it it cures slow like three days or more it depends on how thick it is and how less air can go through it but if we control it we cure it in one day and then um it's more suitable maybe for a prefab sites but um if you manage to make ventilation shafts on a on-site printed object and some infrared panels with it then you can cure it also on-site so we're working on it we we will go into these experiments in in a few months if it's biodegradable how well does it hold up in the weather like the rain outside there are different ways to prepare it with and one of the physical properties of this orgonate and camera is that it becomes water resistant if you treat it with calcium ions and this salt [Music] is curing it on the outside and if it's cured on the outside you can treat it with something like a lime seed oil or another bio-based biopolymer and then it will be resistant to all weather are you guys seeking any investors at this point the way we are working is we we set a goal we want to make an impact with for building but also for biodiversity with the old recipe that's a one focus and now we're focusing on the building blocks and we we set a goal printing bigger making it easier and for instance more water resistant and that goal we're trying to um work towards um via different tryouts different research but through assignment assignments for every goal a smaller goal we have a cooperation with a company and that way we focus on this then we focus on that and then we we're getting there so we and in the meantime maybe there's going to be an investor so we can really make it bigger when we have the the real egg of columbus and but uh at the moment we're thinking about some ways to to to find uh the the right investor for the right moment but um not there yet our project starts with asking are you willing to to spend a little bit more than normal getting an object but invest also in in partnering and and doing research and that's um not um yes here you have some money go on no be part of it yeah and be um um how do you say a talker committed committed yes so committed investments yes yeah call um email all the info is on the website

Channel: Jarett Gross

Views: 20,329

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Id: WA7_V7SiFmw

Length: 21min 52sec (1312 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021