Meanwhile, in Japan, train stations are being 3D-printed in an afternoon You've seen small 3D printed models, heard about 3D printers being used to make guns, and even read news about printed food, but a 3D printed train station? Where else could this be but Japan? The West Japan Railway Group has reportedly turned to 3D printing to speedily construct a train station shelter at Hatsushima in the …
"glacial progress of the transpennine route upgrade"
At £7.3bn for 70 miles of route that already exists, you can't complain that they aren't spending money oop north. Meanwhile for a similar sum France is building a brand new, properly aligned TGV link 150 miles from Bordeaux to Toulouse.
Transport projects in the UK are often a licence to print money. Actually transporting people is very much a secondary issue.
Example: When the Edinburgh Tram project was in deep doodoo, they proposed terminating it at Haymarket station. At that the rails were in place from Lothian Road to the York Place terminus, so what they were proposing to omit was roughly half a mile of track and a mile of overhead. The cost quoted for that work was more than the cost of the entire Nottingham tram system: 15 miles of track, overhead, depot and a fleet of trams.
The Lower Thames Crossing was only approved this week - at a cost of up to £10 billion - whilst I can understand planning costs, as with HS2, land gets purchased well in advance of approval
"So far, it has spent more than £1.2bn in planning and land costs."
At £7.3bn for 70 miles of route that already exists, you can't complain that they aren't spending money oop north. Meanwhile for a similar sum France is building a brand new, properly aligned TGV link 150 miles from Bordeaux to Toulouse.
Well yes, but they've been talking about the TPRU since the 1970s. If you're going to start-stop a project and do it in dribs and drabs over 50 years, the overall cost will be relatively high.
Also, the new LGV is basically all rural-build, teeing onto existing lines to enter the cities and enter existing stations - TPRU involves lots of urban work, station work, compulsory purchase of valuable land. It's completely unsurprising that it has a high £/mile simply for land value reasons and working around existing infrastructure - it's not gold-plated engineering issues.
And of course, once the French commit to a new LGV, they have the good grace to write the engineers a cheque and get out the way.
This actually worked here a bit too. HS2 had teething problems - we have a skills shortage around rail, and they decided to put it under it's own HS2 Ltd as a delivery vehicle instead of just having the local experts (Network Rail) act as engineer. But it found it's feet and at the point where Rishi cancelled Phase 2 to Manchester because of "spiralling costs"... they hadn't touched their contingency fund in over 18 months. Not a project that I would describe as "out of control".
Of course costs keep rising - but that's purely down to political interference. If I'm having a house built, and the day after they fit the triple-glazed windows I insist that actually we're going to with double-glazing to "save money"... the whole project will become very expensive. But that's not incompetence on the builder's part. It's the world's worst customer.
At your service:
A concrete example:
Or do you prefer steel:
I could go on, but someone else already did the work:
Here are printed houses:
Maybe, builders will become publishers?
fraction of the cost of conventional construction methods"
Sadly in the UK that will be the easy bit.
Because all such structures will be called "Non standard construction" as it's not bricks, mortar, cavity walls and slate or tile roofs.
Good luck getting a mortgage for that.
Britain's post WWII history of quickly (and cheaply) system built and prefabricated designs were a tribute to a belief in free market thinking and the British workman's near-complete inability to cope with anything that hadn't been around at least 300 years (the SoA in British building at this time was the use of cavity walls).
While some of them are still providing homes for people today (IIRC the design life was 30 years) the bitter taste of badly constructed, mouldy, damp, asbestos ridden designs has made the British lending industry ridiculously risk averse. The Building Research Establishment could certify that a set of designs met UK standards (which are among the lowest in Europe. We don't even have minimum sizes for room types in the UK). Such designs can be built on timescales of days to weeks, not months.
No problem for the top UK housebuilders BTW. Specialist publications report the top 11 have about 500k plots in "Short term" availability (IE with planning permission) and an additional 600k plots they hold the deeds to but no PP.
IOW those housebuilders could solve the UK Housing shortage tomorrow.. But what would happen to their profit margins? Planning reform is needed* but make no mistake lenders and builders are part of the problem, not the solution. House price appreciation is just another way of saying house price inflation. Why is Rachel Reeves and the BoE pulling their hair out over inflation while loving house price rises? WTF is the point?
*How about time limited planning permission? In say five years time either you've built something, you sold it to someone to build or you leave it without PP until you've got some actual funding to build something. Use it (constructively) or lose it.
Current laws state that planning permission expires after three years from the date it's granted if you don't start using it. Why would you want to extend that window and do you have planning permission for that extension? :-)
"Also, it IS steel reinforced concrete, so how can they claim it costs half as much as building it out of ... steel reinforced concrete? They used half as much?"
Saving on setting up the formwork on site I presume. Most of the cost is in labour, not materials.
Rather than assembling formwork boards piecemeal, you just quickly erect the pre-printed formwork panels.
Correct.
Formwork is the major cost of concrete construction on site. Purchase, erection, repairs, taking away.
OTOH PU foam forms the concrete and supplies the insulation.
IMHO putting the flammable foam plastic foam plastic outside the fire resistant concrete always seemed an odd idea to me.
There is also the 1:3:8 rule discovered by large US shipbuilders. 1Hr of work in a factory will take 3hrs in an on-site assembly area and 8hrs of work inside the structure being constructed*
*For various reasons. Coordination of different groups, stuff being mfg as you go along to fit exactly what has been built, narrow spaces etc.
But the formwork was not set up on site.
As the article describes, the precast concrete was cast offsite, then transported and erected.
Offsite casting and transportation is cheaper than tilt-up construction, which is much cheaper than in-place construction. Tilt-up construction also requires a large on-site footprint, with security and site security.
For all I know, offsite casting may be a rate technology in Japan. But certainly the headline can only be explained by poor translation and editorial carelessness at TheRegister.
Pre-cut kit? Pre-built hut! Transported on a flatbed, lifted to its position, screwed to basement. Done in one hour.
Admittedly, that will probably not be in reinforced concrete but rather some lighter material. And I know some roads are pretty small and this might therefore not be feasible everywhere in Japan.
HUF HAUS. Since 1912
https://www.huf-haus.com/en-uk/
I wish this type of house was more prevalent in the UK, and being used in big housing developments. Near where live, there are a few new housing developments - same old bricks and mortar construction.
About the only big element that seems to come in pre-fabricated are the roof trusses.
We've got precast apartment buildings like this in Melb.vic.au, dating from the 1950's. The advantage for apartment buildings is when you can make many identical copies of the same casting. Using "printed" formwork may actually make precast concreate more attractive for residential houses like this station hut, allowing more variation of form.
But pre-cast concrete is still more expensive and less attractive for most residential buildings. It has poor thermal properties and is not water proof, and there are problems with windows. I mostly see tilt-up used where the factory has been cut into a slope, so no windows are required, water-proofing membrane is protected, and earth provides thermal insulation.
"Pre-cut kit? Pre-built hut! Transported on a flatbed, lifted to its position, screwed to basement. Done in one hour."
After seeing the photo of the hut, that was my thought. They could be mass-produced with common techniques and erected by crane rather than building a framework to hold/move the print nozzle and truck in a few concrete trucks with very specific mix. Even pre-built rebar frames and forms that lock into place could be quicker and easier to use. That would also allow fitting of electrical services for lighting.
I was rather non-whelmed by the image too. A crane/lift and it would be in place before too long. I do wonder how much of the value was around experimentation with new techniques (has to happen somewhere and sometime) and potentially due to how the shelter was to be secured to the platform/ground - for example if it's heavy enough then this isn't much of an issue, if it's light then it has to be secured into the existing ground structures somehow. I suspect this latter scenario is where the issue may have been - it can take a lot more than 180 minutes on-site to clear, prepare and level such ground attachments.
Otherwise it's just a shed, and we've been building that kind of thing for many, many years.
Yes, exactly, the "3 hours" in this case is the assembly time, not the 3d printing time, and you know what, you could cast the concrete sections in a conventional manner just as quickly, and if you really want fancy concrete moulds, just CNC them from a big block of modelling block (MDF). You'll get a better surface finish than from a 3D print that way.
Printers can create shapes, forms and viods in a single run... cnc would require severl setups to accomplish similar results, making it more exspensive.
We have been down this before ..am is alive and well
https://forums.theregister.com/forum/1/2022/10/24/hp_lores_3d_printing_not_met_hype/#c_4554866
"a tiny hut-like structure rather than an imposing building, which in the UK would mean the stop was on a branch line used by few people and most likely earmarked for closure"
I guess the author doesn't travel by train much, or just never looks out the window at smaller stations. Even around London, there are stations that have little more than a bus shelter-like structure that are not on under-used branch lines about to close.
Most likely that it's the nuclear transport trains that keep the route viable/in existence
https://www.directrailservices.com/about-us/
https://www.directrailservices.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/drs-main-slider-3.jpg
So they say "allowing it to be erected in about two and a half hours" and later they say
"We understand the formwork, used to mold concrete sections, was the component actually 3D printed using mortar. These were then filled with concrete and steel reinforcement to create the four parts of the building and its foundations, which were transported to the site and assembled.
The rail company carried out construction work after the day's train services had finished, with the job taking about 180 minutes."
So this sounds like it takes only a couple hours to put the pieces together once they've been printed.
I don't see a figure for how long it takes to print them, and I have a feeling that's quite a big number, if my experience is anything to go by.
It takes me 2 days to print shampoo racks to hang in the back of my shower. How long does it take to print the building formwork? I think there's a bit of PR misdirection here.
3D printing "faded" a bit because most of them are cheap shit like Creality, Anycubic, Sovol, and Elegoo, which mostly print spaghetti, as per @TeeCee above.
You need to get a Prusa or a quality Bambu model before you get anywhere, and everyone cheaps out, then they wonder why they spend 90% of the time fixing their 3D printer and 10% of the time printing something.
"It takes me 2 days to print shampoo racks to hang in the back of my shower. How long does it take to print the building formwork? I think there's a bit of PR misdirection here."
There's such the rage for additive processes that I find many people that don't look at machining, casting and forming. A big foam cutting gantry and hard machinable foam is a great way to make quick forms. I've used that to make forms to layup carbon fibre and other composites. Big pieces can be made in less than a day and are good for several uses as-is. More durable forms can be made with harder materials such as wood with the underlying form able to be re-skinned when it's worn out.
3D printed concrete is pretty neat, but whether it's a viable process or not has me pretty skeptical for a lot of applications.
I've got Anet and Creality filament printers and an Elegoo resin printer. I have really discovered the limitations but I've also found some novel uses. About half the time, I pull a mold from a 3D printed part so I can cast something in a more robust material. I was using them for movie/TV props. I made a guy a mold for classic "pineapple" grenades when he had a call for a couple of cases of grenades for a TV show. 3D printing one in a way that made it easy to pull a silicone mold from was easier than trying to make a mold from a real (deactivated) one. They weren't going to be seen closely enough for anybody to know the difference. Somewhere there is around 50 polyurethane grenades on a couple of wood boxes.
1. There's nothing like a malfunctional "shelter" -- this one is a good example -- which allows the wind, rain, hail, and snow to blow in, to say, "Fuck you, Mr./Ms. Customer!" There's a term for it: "user-hostile architecture", and there's plenty of it, in multiple countries. The construction method is irrelevant.
2. Aesthetically-speaking, I prefer the older, wooden .JP train stations and (rare) pre-WW II wooden .JP school buildings.
>> this one is a good example -- which allows the wind, rain, hail, and snow to blow in, to say, "Fuck you, Mr./Ms. Customer!"
There's likely a reason for this.. Some might consider it a "good" reason, but I'll leave that up to the individual.
The reason that most public transportation structures (bus, train, etc.) are "hostile" to the temporary occupants is because the local government wants them to be this way. If the structures are too "cozy", they end up being semi-permanent homes for the homeless. I've seen this happen many times - especially in the US. They're just meant to provide temporary shelter from the elements until transportation arrives.
I am not judging the morality of this, just stating the way it is.
Also known as “plastic building,” the idea is you buy a bunch of hollow Lego blocks and assemble all your walls over the morning, making sure to insert rebar reinforcement both horizontally and vertically. Take a lunch break, then assist the cement truck to fill up all the cavities. (You need to operate a vibration machine to shake out all the air pockets). Once that’s done, let it cure a couple days then come back and install the roof. Good ones are made of insulating material and also include chase cavities for plumbing, electrical, Cat-6, blah blah. Let the fenestration team slap in the doors and windows, put in ceilings and floorings, and 1 week later move into your hurricane-proof fortress! No robots needed, or even wanted.
(Some guys once stacked all the hollow bricks using quadcopters, but that’s just silly.)
We understand the formwork, used to mold concrete sections, was the component actually 3D printed using mortar. These were then filled with concrete and steel reinforcement to create the four parts of the building and its foundations, which were transported to the site and assembled.
The rail company carried out construction work after the day's train services had finished, with the job taking about 180 minutes. This, it noted, is "considerably shorter" than it would take with conventional methods.
So a manufacturer of precast concrete buildings is using 3D printing for formwork in the factory?
Good, good - if it can do interesting things or improve on existing practices then great.
But the building isn't 3D printed (per the headline) and it's hard to see what the 3D-printed formwork had to do with the rapid on-site assembly of what was - ultimately - just a prefab concrete structure.
