The right collaborations can recognize the need for innovation and disruption and make it a reality. Here, in this news post from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a partnership between the researchers there and a commercial enterprise led to a 3D printed cast system that is significantly stronger than other systems and uses less labor.
A residential and commercial tower under development in Brooklyn that is changing the New York City skyline has its roots in research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The tower’s white precast concrete façade rising from the waterfront site of the former Domino Sugar Factory evokes the form of a sugar crystal – a pattern created from 3D printed molds produced at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL.
When Gate Precast, a member of Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI), was awarded the façade of the Domino building, ORNL researchers saw the building’s tower as the perfect platform to demonstrate that Big Area Additive Manufacturing, or BAAM, technology could rapidly manufacture molds suitable for precast concrete manufacturing.
“We didn’t know if 3D-printed molds could be made to work for the precast industry,” said Diana Hun, lead buildings researcher on the project. “But we thought it was worthwhile to examine the potential.”
Building technologies and manufacturing researchers at ORNL collaborated with Gate Precast and PCI to design and produce molds out of carbon fiber reinforced acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a common thermoplastic compounded with chopped carbon fibers.
