Founder, Gayle Parsons, sums up the Summer Print week by week.
Week 8
This week was mainly focused on preparing for a visit from Dr Riccardo Madalenna from Cardiff University, and a post doc colleague Mehdi, who has specialist knowledge in 3D printing with concrete.
Riccardo and his colleague at the School of Architecture, Brunella, have been incredibly supportive of our project over the past few years and for the second year running they have hosted an intern in their Engineering Department. We are hoping to get further funding from the Institute of Civil Engineers to fund 2 more interns to be based at the School of Architecture, for a 3 month period commencing next month, so finger crossed for that!
Megan has devised a meticulously designed spreadsheet recording our results in great detail, from whether the material will pump, if it pumps will it print, if it prints how does it look and how well does it retain its shape, and then each sample is monitored over a 28 day period, recording shrinkage, cracking and drying time.
The mix ratios are very carefully controlled, changing only one variable at a time, so we can get to a place where we can analyse the data in detail before handing over the samples for the next stage of the process, testing in the lab at Cardiff University.
Riccardo and Mehdi showed us how to use our new flow rate equipment, which will form part of our data from now on. They took some of our early samples back with them to calibrate the machines for the many cubes, cylinders and prisms we have been printing for testing.
