3D concrete printing

The development of 3D concrete printing systems has been underway worldwide for several years. It is expected that this technology will revolutionize large parts of the construction industry. Many research institutes and material manufacturers worldwide are working on the further development of 3D concrete printing. The range of applications includes the production of smaller parts such as design objects, benches, etc., the production of larger prefabricated parts such as bridge elements and the printing of entire houses.

The great advantage of this technology is that parts can be produced with the greatest possible freedom of form without molds or formwork and can therefore be adapted precisely to the respective requirements with little effort. In areas where particularly complex shapes of high quality are required, "2K technology" is being used more and more frequently. In this process, a liquid accelerator is added to the printing material in the print head shortly before the printing process, which ensures that the curing time of the material can be controlled in such a way that, on the one hand, a good bond between the print layers is achieved and, on the other hand, sufficient stability of the print object is ensured during printing.

MAI® began working intensively on this technology back in 2017. In collaboration with material manufacturers and system integrators, both conveying pumps for premixed materials and mixing pumps for processing dry materials were developed and adapted to the special requirements of the 3D printing application. Since then, many leading research institutes around the world have relied on MAI® technology in their development laboratories.

The latest development is the patented MAI® 3DCP PRINTHEAD with integrated dosing pump, which was developed for 2-component concrete printing and works perfectly with the MAI® MULTIMIX-3D and MAI® MULTICOMP-3D mixing pumps.