Support-strategies for robocasting ceramic building components

Abstract

The introduction of ceramic additive manufacturing technologies in the building industry offers unprecedented opportunities to architects and engineers towards a new brickarchitecture. Robocasting appears as a suitable technology to produce the medium- to large-scale components needed for building applications. This process involves deploying individual strands of clay layerwise to form an object. Unlike powder-bed or sheetlamination-processes, robocasting does not come with a process-inherent supportmaterial. Using support-material increases the range of producible geometries and therefore is a crucial necessity to exploit the technology. In this paper, first the limits of the unsupported process were identified. Also, a representative architectural component, which included overhangs, bridged areas and arcs was designed generatively. In the first stage, its geometry was derived from the material-related limitations of the used clay. Next, different strategies to exceed the process-related limitations have been developed and tested. The results are discussed and an overview of these counteractions and their applicability is provided. Ultimately, the representative architectural component was fabricated once again, with a geometry exceeding the geometric limitations by applying the support-strategies that were developed beforehand.