Revista de Nanomateriais e Nanotecnologia Molecular

Design and Development of 3D House Printer

Idris Al Ismaili

House printer innovation is one of the most important technologies that would bring to humanity a countless number of benefits represented in obtaining a dignified affordable house with the least cost and within no time. The traditional methods used to build a house are inefficient, the project carries high significance to our country Oman where the construction industry suffers from many problems whether it is the poor productivity levels or the shortage in skilled laborers in addition to other major concerns. The project aims to demonstrate the idea of house printing by developing a prototype that can be used to print a concrete layer by layer to form basic structure similar to a small-scale house. The group has come with a detailed design of the prototype that will be implemented and used to demonstrate the technology. 3D Printing Technology (FDM) 3D Printing using a solid material can be done in various ways. A frequently used method is Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM). The respective material is heated to just above its melting point by a heating element (liquefier) contained in an extrusion head and is deposited in semiliquid form, layer by layer onto a build platform. Support material can also be used which has a separate nozzle to print a removable material in order to support overhangs and particularly thin sections of the model. This support material is removed after completion, leaving the intended 3D model behind (Cooper, 2001). House 3D printers use extrusion technology. Some models’ appearance can be compared with super-sized desktop FFF/FDM 3D printers, whereas others consist of a rotating mechanical arm. Paste-type components, such as concrete or earth, are used as filament. Material is pushed out of a special nozzle to form layers, designing the foundations and walls of the house or building. Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), or Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF), is an additive manufacturing process that belongs to the material extrusion family. In FDM, an object is built by selectively depositing melted material in a pre-determined path layer-by-layer. The materials used are thermoplastic polymers and come in a filament form. FDM is the most widely used 3D Printing technology: it represents the largest installed base of 3D printers globally and is often the first technology people are exposed to. In this article, the basic principles and the key aspects of the technology are presented.