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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the heavy-metal dept.

3D printing started out with tiny plastic structures, and over time it has moved on to larger, more complex, and more solid things, from duck prosthetics to airplane engine parts. Will the next step be infrastructure?

A company named MX3D intends to do just that, with the help of Dutch designer Joris Laaram and Autodesk (providing the software to make this happen). The goal is to use robots to 3D-print a steel bridge over a canal in Amsterdam, basically creating the bridge out of thin-air, like in the rendering above.

Particularly challenging is that the robots will be printing their own supporting structures, so any early mistake or miscalculation will be fatal to the project.

"I strongly believe in the future of digital production and local production, in "the new craft". This bridge will show how 3D printing finally enters the world of large-scale, functional objects and sustainable materials while allowing unprecedented freedom of form," said Joris Laarman, the designer of the bridge. "The symbolism of the bridge is a beautiful metaphor to connect the technology of the future with the old city, in a way that brings out the best of both worlds."

Perhaps self-printing, self-healing infrastructure is the answer to its crumbling all the time.


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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 18 2015, @01:13PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday June 18 2015, @01:13PM (#197787) Journal

    the problem China has with faltering infrastructure is that it's not designed or built to last (they have serious issues over there)

    You're not kidding. I was in a Mandarin immersion program at Capital Normal University in Beijing, and occasion to buy train tickets at the then shiny new Beijing West Terminal. It had been built in something like 1/3 the time a similar sized structure in the West (or Japan/South Korea/Taiwan) would take to build. 6 months after they had cut the ribbon on the facility there were already cracks in the ceiling so wide you could see daylight through them.

    It seems the Chinese themselves too know how dicey their modern constructions are. Occasionally rumors about impending earthquakes spread [google.com] and huge masses of people de-camp to the countryside.

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