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Branch Technology builds 'world's largest 3D printed structure' in Tennessee

Chattanooga, Tenn.–based architectural fabricator Branch Technology officially unveiled a bandshell pavilion at Nashville’s oneC1TY development that is billed as the world's largest 3D-printed structure.

Made of carbon fiber–reinforced Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene and finished with an ultraviolet protective metallic paint, the 20-foot-tall, 42-foot-wide pavilion was unveiled last week at the 2018 International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures, an architecture and engineering symposium at MIT, in Cambridge, Mass.The OneC1TY bandshell pavilion was commissioned by Cambridge to embody some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals the site is seeking to demonstrate, and was designed and fabricated by Branch Technology.

The original design was digitally created and analyzed but found that it would need an obtrusive steel sub‐structure to support the large spans that would have tripled the the project cost. The team, led by Branch Technology designers Melody Rees and Jason Vereschak worked with New York–based structural engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti's R&D incubator CORE Studio. They re‐designed the bandshell using in-house and aerospace software programs and created an optimum structure needing no steel to make the large 42’ diameter spans, except for anchoring base plates at the foundation. Using the company's Cellular Fabrication (C-Fab) 3D-printing technology, the Branch team 3D printed 40 panels off-site over a period of 10 weeks and then assembled them on the designated spot in Nashville.Branch Technology’s C-Fab techniquethe uses a customized industrial robotic arm (the Kuka KR 90), which extrudes a carbon fiber reinforced ABS plastic material into complex, large-scale structures up to 8,772 cubic feet in size. What sets these structures apart from other concrete additive manufacturing processes, is that they only actually make up the inner framework of the building structure. That is, once printed, the additively manufactured framework can be sprayed with traditional low-cost building materials like foam insulation and concrete to make a strong, hybrid building structure.

"C‐Fab is distinctive in that it prefabricates volume as cellular matrices," according to the company. "The open‐cell nature allows for efficient builds and endless geometric form. For architectural application, the matrix acts as a formwork or scaffold to accept traditional building materials. The results deliver a product that is as robust as it is revolutionary."The OneC1TY pavilion weighs around 3,200 pounds and can withstand 1 inch of ice, up to 12 inches of snow, and 90 mph wind.

Of course, without a Guinness World Records standing by, it’s hard to verify the studio’s claim. Records are obviously meant to be broken, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) currently holds the Guinness World Record for largest single-piece 3D printed object: a 17.5 feet long, 5.5 feet wide, and 1.5 feet tall wing tool that was custom-made for Boeing.

Branch Technology builds 'world's largest 3D printed structure' in Tennessee

Details

  • Cambridge, MA, USA
  • Branch Technology