Effective extrusion-based 3D printing system design for cementitious-based materials

The widespread popularity of additive manufacturing in most industries ranging from biomedical to aerospace suggests a transformation in manufacturing, which has recently also emerged in the construction sector. This paper presents an active system for the extrusion-based 3D printing of cementitious materials. The system can be extended to other materials and scaled up with slight hardware modifications. The proposed system uses an unconventional yet simplistic approach to generate a consistent output of material throughout the printing process. The effectiveness of the extruder is demonstrated through an extensive printing and testing of various cementitious-based materials. The printing and material parameters, which are essential for high mechanical strength printed object were investigated and optimized through a logical iterative loop of trials. The results showed the shape retention of 3D printed objects using the proposed design of extrusion-based system in conjunction with optimized rheology of cementitious-based materials was encouraging for larger scale 3D printing.