Adaptive Concrete 3D Printing Based on industrial Robotics

Abstract: Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from 3D CAD model. The process includes that material depositing, joining or solidifying using computer control. It is getting widely used in many fields, such as architecture and civil engineering, industry and even medical fields. Also, the prevalence of 6 axis industrial robot gives researchers and engineers extended possibilities to design and create with the additional degrees of freedom. This project has been conducted at KTH ABE school and ITM school. In recent years, The ABE school explored the possibility of 3D printing with building materials such as concrete which provides a practical basis for the implementation of this project. The ITM school gave guidance and suggestions for this project based on their experience in industrial manufacturing and robot control. The goals were to propose an improvement of current workflow and explore a detection strategy for the defection of concrete 3D printing product. Due to the material limitations of concrete and robot control, the previous printing tasks that should have been automated require human supervision and intervention, which affects work efficiency and completion of finished product. In order to avoid this, an Intel RealSense L515 Lidar camera was applied to capture a point cloud of product to detect the height of product and program can compensate the print layers number and robot trajectory. The industrial robot is controlled by KRL generated from the known trajectory. The implementation of this project consists of background research, design the layout of 3D printing system, algorithm development and case study. A simple clay model is produced during this project to study the feasibility of this method.