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Mega-Scale Fabrication by
Contour Crafting
Behrokh Khoshnevis
University of Southern California
Viterbi School of Engineering
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Fabrication Processes
• Subtractive (milling, turning, chiseling, sawing,..)
• Formative (pressing, forging, bending,..)
• Additive
– Casting (requiring mold)
– Traditional Layered Fabrication in manual construction
– Modern Layered Fabrication (SFF or RP) Technologies
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Commercialized RP Technologies
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Limitations of current SFF methods
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•
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Slow speed
Not scalable
Limited choice of materials
Impossible to embed other objects
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What is Contour Crafting?
Material feed barrel
Side trowel control
mechanism
CC is a layered fabrication method
which combines ancient surface
forming concepts with modern
robotics technology
Nozzle
Top trowel
Side trowel
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A CC machine for thermoplastics
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Nozzle Assemblies
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Plastic Parts
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Movable Side Trowel
Cylinder
Connector
Bevel gear
Nozzle
Side trowel
mechanism of
movable side
trowel
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Building Various Surface Slopes
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Slant Wall Fabrication
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Creating hollow depositions
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Embedding Reinforcement
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Application in Construction
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Self Actualization Needs (full potential)
Ego Needs (self respect, personal worth, autonomy)
Social Needs (love, friendship, comradeship)
Security Needs (protection from danger)
Physiological Needs (food, shelter)
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Why automate construction?
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Labor efficiency is alarmingly low
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Skilled workforce is vanishing
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Work quality is low
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Control of the construction site is insufficient and difficult
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Accident rate at construction sites is high
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Waste and trims are high (3 To 7 tons per average home; 40% of all materials used
(> 400,000 / year in US)
worldwide are for construction)
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Low income housing and emergency shelters are critical
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Construction is the largest sector of almost all economies
•
All other products are fabricated automatically – construction is still
largely a manual task
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Construction productivity decline
Non-farm productivity index
Construction
Productivity index
Labor productivity comparison for non-farm industries and construction industry
developed by Paul Teicholz
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Edison’s concrete houses
$175,000 for molds
More than 2000 pieces
500,000 pounds
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Automated construction in Japan
• 89 single task construction robots
• 11 different automated construction systems
This robot
absorbs
the water
which
remains
after
concrete
has been
set.
Concrete Surface Treatment Robot
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Big-Canopy high-rise pre-cast concrete construction system.
Used to construct the 26 storey pre-cast concrete 30,726m2
Yachiyodai Condominium building in Japan.
The system realized a 60% reduction in labor requirements for the frame erection.
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Form work cost structure
Reinforcement
Wales
Ties
Studs
Sheathing
Brace
Concrete footing
10%
7%
Formwork Labor
Concrete Materials
53%
30%
Formwork Materials
Concrete Labor
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A straight wall builder
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Full scale wall sections
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Adobe structures – Ageless comfort and beauty
House of
Brojerdi
Kashan
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Interior of an
Adobe house
CalEarth Design
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House made with vaults and domes
Interior of an
Adobe house
CalEarth Design
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Ingenious methods
Manual construction of adobe form structures
using clay bricks (Source: Khalili, 2000)
A vault structure made of clay bricks
(Source: Khalili, 2000)
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Free-standing Objects / Industrial parts
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Adobe house Construction
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Extraterrestrial Construction
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Deployable CC
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Lunar Construction
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Machine at NASA
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Next Machine
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Research specimens (concrete)
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Please visit www.ContourCrafting.org
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What constitutes construction cost?
Portion
Due to
If Automated by CC
20%-25%
Financing
Short project length and control of
time to market will dramatically
reduce this cost
25%-30%
Materials
Will be a wasteless (lean) process
45%-55%
Labor
Will be significantly reduced
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