The building fittings specialist Putzmeister presented many new products relating to the construction site of tomorrow at the bauma trade fair in Munich. The German company is working on 3D printing technology in the construction sector to address low productivity and skills shortages, particularly through the introduction of the mobile and highly automated KARLOS 3D printer.
The picture below shows a solid wall straight from the 3D printer: With KARLOS, concrete walls can be built quickly – without any conventional formwork and with classic normal concrete. As a highly innovative combination of mobile concrete pump and precise robotic technology, KARLOS enables quick construction on the construction site and highly automated creation of walls.
This not only reduces manual labor and safety risks on the construction site, but also enables more efficient and time-saving construction compared to traditional construction methods. In addition, the use of standard concrete with a maximum grain size of 8 mm, which can be supplied from conventional ready-mixed concrete plants, opens up considerable potential in terms of the economic efficiency of the manufacturing process.
Sustainability is also taken into account. KARLOS works electrically and with low emissions on the construction site and creates the possibility of using CO2-reduced concrete recipes.
A major advantage of the technology is the digital consistency of the design and construction process. Planned components are extracted from digital building models and then translated into individual print layers. The printing path and printing speed are defined based on various parameters (opening time of the material, load transfer of the material, etc.). This path planning is then transferred to a machine control code and read into the machine. KARLOS then prints out the building layer by layer and processes the plan automatically.
Technical data from KARLOS
Pressure application: Vertical walls in solid construction
Print width / print height: Up to 30 cm / up to 6 cm
Assembly and dismantling time: approx. 60 minutes
Printing material: Concrete with a maximum grain size of 8 mm
Print speed: 10 cm/s
Printing range: 26 m
Chassis: MB AROCS 3743 8×4/4 / 5750
Maximum total weight: 32t
Power supply: electric 125 A
Support width with full support: 9.60 m
