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A column built from thousands of compressed earth portions standing on a pallet outside a laboratory hall

Impact Printing

ETH Zurich, Switzerland · 2024 · Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich

A robot shoots portions of earth at high speed, building walls and columns layer after layer without cement and without waiting for the material to set.

Impact printing is a robotic additive method for building with earth. A custom tool portions the material and fires it at high speed, so each portion bonds to the ones below on impact. Unlike concrete printing, it needs no pauses for the material to set, and the mix is largely made from excavated material that would otherwise be waste. The tool has run on a high-payload gantry robot in the Robotic Fabrication Laboratory and on HEAP, the autonomous legged excavator of the Robotic Systems Lab.

How COMPAS was used

The printed structures are designed as sequenced toolpaths, and COMPAS FAB transfers those toolpaths to the robot controller.

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