A new 3D-printing method has built the full structural walls of a home in less than a day in Western Australia, an Australian first.
The state’s only operational 3D concrete printing company, Contec Australia, has now completed the country’s first multi-storey 3D-printed concrete home at Tapping, 27km north of the Perth CBD.
The structural walls of the home took just 18 hours of active printing time, while the entire two-storey building from slab to completion took just five months.
Contec founder Mark D’Alessandro said 3D-concrete printing offered a scalable solution at a time of labour shortages and rising construction costs.
“Meeting future housing demand will require more than traditional approaches alone,” D’Alessandro said.
“[The] 3D-concrete printing offers an innovative solution that complements existing methods, delivering projects with greater speed, cost efficiencies, sustainability, and design flexibility.”
The concrete mix prints walls layer by layer, removing the need for formwork or scaffolding as it is self supporting.
It sets hard in under three minutes and reaches 50MPa, more than three times the strength of standard bricks at 15MPa.
The walls are fire and water resistant, termite proof, thermally efficient and are cyclone rated.
Contec’s mobile robotic printer is the size of a forklift and can operate on or off-site, on constrained sites, and requires minimal setup to print at 500mm a second.
The concrete mix Contec uses creates 30 per cent less carbon dioxide than conventional concrete and only one wheelbarrow of waste per print.
D’Alessandro also leads the construction company, JCM Property Group, but offers Contec’s 3D-printing services to builders across WA.
“Our delivery method provides a compliant and efficient alternative to support the timely, cost-efficient, and scalable delivery of housing and critical infrastructure in WA,” D’Alessandro said.
