Quantifying 3D Concrete Printing Production Waste

A critical aspect of sustainable manufacture is the minimisation of waste, and this is especially important due to the relatively high embodied carbon content of the materials used in 3DCP, however, waste production is largely unreported. This article addresses this gap by presenting a case study based on the manufacture of three similar 250–300 kg panels, where material mass was tracked through all stages of production. A new methodology for systematic waste monitoring is presented and for the case studied, the total waste material was found to be 11–14%, and observed that problems during manufacture, can also lead to excessive machine run time and associated energy consumption. The work suggests that waste could be reduced to 7% to 10% in a ‘best-case’ production setting. The work also highlights the sensitivity to human error/judgement in increasing waste, as well as utilising recycling of printed material during printing to reduce waste, which is straight forward in 1K systems, but suggests that 2K approaches with rapid setting could be much more sensitive to poor operation.