Shavingcrete
So, the other day I took a red pill on housing, freebeard told me about Aircrete, and I took a bigger red pill.
What is Aircrete? Cement and soap foam, together at last. Quote:
I have had all kinds of questions and it seems like nobody has answers for many of them, or one answer leads to more questions. First of all, why is it Aircrete if it is cement and foam? Don't they know the difference between cement and concrete? Can I build a house out of it? Can I build a snowman? That same pages says "Just one liter of dish detergent with 10 gals of water make enough foam to produce about 2 cubic meters or 70 cubic feet of AC. The foam expands the volume of cement by a factor of 5 - 7. It eliminates the need for aggregates, gravel, sand, or rock." A ratio of 1 liter of dish soap to 10 gallons of water. Who mixes units? How does soap foam replace gravel, etc.? So, a ratio of 1.05669 : 40. Cool. Dome Gaia sells a foam machine for the bargain-basement price of $500, although they will ship you the kit for $360, and plans for $39, but they say it will probably cost you more to source the parts yourself. Little Dragon - 115 volt This guy sells plans for $8 and says the parts will cost $30, but apparently people complain it cost them over a hundred. They will send you the parts for $80, or the complete unit for $125 https://www.etsy.com/listing/5523975..._home_active_2 https://www.etsy.com/listing/5709663..._home_active_4 https://www.etsy.com/listing/5710398..._home_active_3 I am not sure about the Little Dragon, but the Etsy one requires an air compressor, which is fine if you have one. I firmly believe in using the proper tools, but I am not spending hundreds of dollars out of curiosity. What about... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6LoVvhruvs at least for proof of concept? It says to take a 55-gallon drum, add a crazy-heavy bag of cement (94 pounds. Weird number!), seven gallons of water, and enough foam to make 45 gallons. So... how much foam? Ninety-four pounds of cement is one cubic foot, which is 7.48 gallons, so a ratio of 1.06864564: 1 of cement to concrete. Right, so what is the total volume? How much shaving cream is in a can? Nobody knows. I bought a 12-ounce can from the dollar store and got just over a gallon from it. I mixed 28 ounces of cement and 30 ounces of water, which yielded about 48 ounces of concrete. 7:48: 45 is about 1: 6, which would have required 288 ounces of foam, 2.25 gallons--two cans would not have been enough! I bought some plastic toolboxes from the dollar store, 4.5 x 11 x 3 inches. Each can made about 1.25 shavingcrete bricks, although with 2.25 cans of shaving cream it would have been 2.8 bricks. The toolbox has been in the bathroom with the heater on for hours. I do not have any idea how long it will take to harden. It is taking forever! |
94lb of Portland cement is 1 cubic foot.
That way if you are like me and mixing up ballistic concrete you are looking for about a 1:1:2 mix or 1 part cement, 1 sand 2 large aggregate you know how much stuff to buy or how much concrete I can make with the stuff I have and how much it will cost. Furthermore how much water to use. The more water you use the weaker you concrete will be. The aircrete I was looking at not too long ago mixed soapy water with Portland cement. |
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What I took away from the videos that I watched was that it gets crumbly if the foam bubbles are too large. IIRC somewhere in the 5-10 micron range(?). Using shaving cream is a good kludge, maybe you can find out about what size the bubbles are. Curing time isn't going to be hours. Concrete is stiff enough to walk in on 48 hours and continues to gain strength for a month. Eventually you will have some test samples. :thumbup: Earlier today I was reading about carbon neutral/negative concrete: CONCRETE THOUGHTS The material that built the modern world is also destroying it. Here’s a fix Yesterday it was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclaved_aerated_concrete Quote:
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A similar effect can be accomplished by making cinderblocks
Aircrete sounds weak and water permeable but who knows maybe it’s weight to strength remains fair? Further cement with bubbles won’t insulate well, the cement conducts so well heat will just bridge around the bubbles, Maybe a small increase in insulation r value similar to paper concrete made from paper mill tailings? |
You can always coat the concrete products to make them better in some way. Say epoxy coating them.
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You can find Youtube videos of someone holding a block of aircrete and holding a blowtorch on the other side. It's like the Space Shuttle's tiles. Let's imagine for a moment. An telescopic robot arm at the center of a circular building line, with a 3D print head at the wrist. Two print nozzles; one is aircrete — as stiff a mix as can be pumped through the nozzle, the other a mortar mix with fiberglass strands or sand, with or without epoxy hardeners mixed at the nozzle. Depending on the degrees of freedom available to the arm, the form would be approximately hemispherical. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...se_%281%29.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armour-Stiner_House I don't get why people don't go for this stuff. :confused: |
I'm a people!
Person? By the way, I was trying to figure out how to make concrete from facial hair, but I realized I needed to cut it off first. Pity. Lappy is not letting me attach the picture of Aircrete floating in water. Here: https://youtu.be/aSLJCPR1Prw?t=11m47s Build a bridge out of it! Blowtorch: https://youtu.be/aSLJCPR1Prw?t=12m25s Dome Gaia says it is rated to 300 PSI, but concrete is far stronger than that. |
My ballistic concrete was around 3,600psi at 28 days according to my Schmidt hammer tester.
Which was almost identical to commercial "5000psi concrete". |
Often I wonder why Saving@Home or Eco-Renovator don't get more attention.
Just like cars need glass and rubber, a house needs more than a weather shell. Here are two things I've seen lately, one high- and one low-tech: phys.org:Solar power advances possible with new 'double-glazing' device cleantechnica.com:Scientists Channel Tesla & Einstein To Invent New Double-Glazed Solar Panel Bucky Fuller proposed triangular vacuum glazing in his 1928 Dymaxion house. It turns out Argon gas is better. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9x5WMzvHbf...ion+System.png THE DYMAXION HOUSE: Dymaxion Developments Then there is what you can do with plane trees and stainless steel screws. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQdcfiLfgUY Compared to the massive steel scaffolding they use with their in-the-box thinking, one could make an edge vertex half-icosahedron with planters on two full height tripods and two half height posts. [place to add a picture when I find it] |
Or maybe just add a bag of this to 1cuft of portland cement?
https://www.amleo.com/horticultural-...iABEgImK_D_BwE First porosity material that popped into my head, and it looks like it's a thing: SCHUNDLER COMPANY--Perlite Insulating Concrete |
Concerning the compressive strength of aircrete; you'll need reinforcing. How about basalt?
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Wait, what now?
https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gatheri...asalt+monolith Mix basalt fibers into aircrete and not basalt rebar? Both? :) It seems like most aircrete videos on YouTube are by people who do not have any idea what they are doing. One guy has a Green Dragon and other equipment and it seems like all that he does is create garbage, including his videos. The guy who made the $30 plans seems to be able to make it work, but I feel like he is keeping secrets to himself. |
Magic: the Gathering survived MT Gox?
They say that bad money drives good money out of circulation. Maybe it's the same with Youtube videos. ??? Rebar might not be appropriate for aircrete. (Maybe as a belt around the perimeter?) The mesh is middle ground between the loose fibers and rebar. Did you notice the braided mesh that would be deformable to conform to 3D shapes? In the 1960s I saw a bowling alley in Klamath Falls, OR, which had the entire ceiling sprayed with asbestos. Possibly the last time the public was exposed to it in building construction. I saw a video of a building in Mongolia that had a spray-on ceiling that looked the same, made from basalt wool. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=basaltwool http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/oldro...a/CRB97-F9.jpg http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdoc...erica/crb1.jpg Quote:
It's not like we're going to run out of the stuff. |
You could use zarcronium bearing fiberglass or polyester fibers for reinforcement. Works real good with concrete.
I don't know if basalt can take CaHO exposure. |
A guy on YouTube mixed Aircrete and basalt fibers, but he never showed how any of his experiments turns out, although he shows a number of failures. Maybe the rest are, too.
This is the only time that I have seen him test anything, aside from crumbling stuff with his hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0sU3qXwvyw Searching for basalt and Aircrete shows hundreds of results that only contain one term. You had one job, Google! However, I did find this: "It is possible to add other products to the LITEBUILT® Foam Mix to obtain lightweight composite concrete. Notably the use of various fibers increases the strength of the product and prevents cracking in adverse conditions." http://www.litebuilt.com/general.html I can only wonder what they charge for their sauce. "A 10% LITEBUILT® Foam content in the concrete mix renders it stronger than dense weight concrete." "Another competitive product is the use of expanded Polystyrene beads in the concrete mix. This process has several drawbacks when compared with LITEBUILT® Aerated Lightweight Concrete. Firstly, the Polystyrene beads have to be chemically treated to loose their volatile electrostatic properties. This makes the process expensive. Secondly, Polystyrene tends to gasify in high heat, releasing toxic fumes. A number of Fire Authorities around the world have already expressed concern about the product and some countries have banned the product outright for construction use." |
It looks like someone had my idea four and a half years ago! From: FAQs | Natural Building Blog
John on June 14, 2013 at 11:28 AM said: Quote:
Al Gore used this on his mansion: Home | Airkrete - All Green Light Weight Cement Insulation! This would interest me if they just listed a price! https://www.richway.com/construction...s/cfp6-1c.html It looks like this guy made stuff for playgrounds out of something like Aircrete and basalt fibers, but the website he mentions is down: foamed cement The Google results for this look good, but every page asks for a password: http://www.litebuiltconcrete.com They just sell soap: https://www.goodcell.net/rates |
Have your samples cured yet?
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Mostly they talk about Sodium Hydroxide or Hydrocloric Acid. |
After several hours, it still had the texture of whipped cream, but when I checked the next morning, the outside felt solid.
Weirdly, the leftover half was still soup. I left them at Mom's house. I did not know what might happen as I drove them and the house in Page is cold, but if they need four weeks to cure, they do not need me poking them, and would only take longer at my house. From what I can tell, Aircrete is soapy mudbricks. There is a type of autoclaved aircrete, with a video on YouTube claiming that their non-autoclaved aircrete was better in every way. Of course, it could have been worse in many ways they omitted. I don't want to wait twenty-eight days! Perhaps the homemade aircrete projects that I have seen on YouTube would have been successful had they just waited. From Wikipedia: "Fired bricks are one of the longest-lasting and strongest building materials, sometimes referred to as artificial stone." So, a kiln would make bricks stronger? Would a school district likely have one? :) |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocl...rated_concrete ^^Aluminum flakes make hydrogen bubbles. |
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I have asked The King of Random (and The Boy Wonder) a couple of times to build a kiln to fire his clay bricks. Yesterday they tried barbecuing homemade pottery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHvfdddSjgk
From what I have read, the bricks need to maintain over 1,000°, and glow red. The Boy Wonder went from warming the pots by a fire to covering them in briquettes. He used a shop vacuum as a bellows and added a quarter bag of briquettes at a time. People commented: 1. He needed to maintain the temperature evenly. 2. He should have "scored and slipped." 3. He needed to use refractory bricks to keep the heat in. I never took ceramics. You scratch the clay before adding another piece. Slipping is reducing clay to a watery mess and you put that on the scored clay before you add more. TBW said you needed to make the clay evenly thick, but did not seem to do a very good job with his fingers. I thought a tortilla press would have worked. This page recommends a rolling pin [and explains scoring and slipping]. From what I have read, uneven thickness contributes to cracking, but that page shows a sculpture, not a tile, so it is completely uneven. It sounds like TBW needed to add briquettes gradually and keep the air supply steady. When The King of Random made a clay brick, people asked about using his backyard foundry to fire the clay. People said it would not work, but this guy made his own kiln. It looks like an upside-down backyard foundry. I ordered this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I wanted to make sure that I had the correct ratio of water to cement. It seems the foam ratio determines the characteristics, not the success rate, so I will worry about that later. I bought a loaf pan from the dollar store and another can of shaving cream. I had not realized that I did not use the entire can last time, so I made sure to shake it and try again. I used a quick-release clamp to hold down the button. I also had the can sit in hot water, because last time the can was cold and seemed to have http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1513267558 Quote:
Our oven does not work, but I have a toaster oven, although listening to it tick every second, and then dinging and turning off after fifteen minutes was annoying. Several hours? Uh... I would not have tried to run this while I slept. I only got 45 minutes. I doubt the toaster oven maintains much heat, but I left it alone until morning. I found it curious I only saw this mentioned once, but the guy on Youtube that does not seem to know what he is doing, and does not seem to have successfully made anything mentioned keeping the surface damp as it cures, like you are supposed to with concrete. I am not sure how often you are supposed to do that. The top feels dry, but dented when I tapped it. |
I was going to be a mechanical engineer until they gave me my first elective in my Sophomore year. I chose Ceramics, and the next [term/semester?] I transferred to Architecture. But I outlasted 80% of the cohort.
It needs to be wet when it goes together, then bone dry for firing. This is greenware. Low-temp firing creates bisque: Choosing a Bisque Temperature Glazed bisque re-fired at a higher temp creates stoneware. HTH |
I was reading that site's page about why pottery cracks. They seem to have good information.
How do I keep my shavingcrete from collapsing in the middle? |
As successful as anything else I do
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Maybe I need more oil on the pan. The brick came out pretty easily, but left a layer on the pan... ...cemented on. It crumbled all over and I took it to the garbage outside to break up, but the middle did not break easily. I did not attempt to torture test it, I broke off what came easily, and that is what is left. Actually rectangular pans, more oil, and trying to leave it higher in the middle? At what point should I be able to turn it over? |
You're the one out on the bleeding edge.
Shaving lubricants in the foam? Bubbles too big/random sizes? In most of the videos I've seen they use a thin mixture that pours and self-levels. |
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Now I remember... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...tem-180967277/ :) > |
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My original bricks (with twice the concrete\foam ratio) cured inside for a week and then sat in the oven at 190 for nine hours. One turned out nicely, but I have not done more than put it somewhere safe and quickly see that it does not seem crumbly:
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1513539812 I do not know why this one came out bubbly, but trying to smooth it made it worse! http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1513539821 For some reason, they formed two layers. The crumbly one had a fair amount of water, seemingly between the layers. http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1513539827 http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1513539833 http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1513539838 I will crop these pictures when I get home, but I appreciate they automatically resize now! :) I showed Mom one of the Dome Gaia Gaia Domes and she asked if they were building those in Puerto Rico. |
Someone should be. There is a great opportunity to break out of a number of boxes. If she's concerned about PR, show her this:
Bloomberg: How to Rebuild Puerto Rico It's book-ended by a feel-good story about a fleaweight boxer, but the heart of it is a tale about anarcho-capitalists. It's inspiring. I think the bubble size wasn't controlled. Don't be put off by the word autoclave in Autoclaved Aerated Concrete. The just means a sterile oven. You might have to powder the aluminum to get small bubbles. |
12 x 16 aircrete building for $1,000
So, apparently it had been longer than I thought since I checked up on Honey-do Carpenter. I saw some videos about building a shed, which he periodically says is not a shed. It seems he made several videos which he concluded some months back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd7wV0J671A It has a concrete foundation, metal studs, and the roof is plywood and 2x4s, He laid down each set of studs, cut metal mesh to fit in between, poured aircrete, screwed them together using braces that seemed to be scrap metal, built a crane to lower the cables that he built in a similar fashion, and he said he was going to pour aircrete between the layers of plywood in the roof. Stucco on the outside, plaster on the inside. The last video is from six months ago and it was still not finished, but I thought that it looked great. For reference, YouTube recommended this video where a guy made a 12x16 shed for $2,600: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaN1hnR7pSk The video is almost 100 minutes long. I did not get very far! It is just plywood, siding, 2x4s, and OSB. It has a wooden floor sitting on nine concrete piers. He did not install any insulation. 62% less cost for an insulated building on a concrete foundation sounds like an amazing value. This is more than a curiosity to me, I moved in with my mother a year ago, into the smallest room in the house, and I have a number of things in my bedroom that do not belong to me because I do not know where else to put them. I have my dresser, tools, and Army stuff in a locker, and at least twice the manager has put a lock on my locker for not paying a late fee. When I got the locker, I immediately set up automatic payments set for ten days before the due date. Previously, I had many checks cashed before the due date, so how was my payment date with an extra ten days? I then set my payments to go out another ten days earlier and I still missed a payment? Or not. One time there was a lock, he could not tell me why it was there, and he removed it. I got a locker to store things we had in the garage so I could work on my Civic. I am going to get rid of as much of that stuff as I can. I have also mentioned my difficulty focusing when I try to do schoolwork, paperwork, etc., and that my mom likes to try to talk to me when I am taking tests. I finally found a solid-core door, which will hopefully attenuate my family, but is it too much to ask for just a desk for doing schoolwork? I have wanted a small office space for schoolwork, paperwork, and making confidential calls. Mom and I have discussed me putting in a second shed. It would be great if I could store my stuff there and still have room for a desk. So, I made a thread years ago about moving our shed. Dad had me put in a fence and regulations required us to move the shed a couple of feet from the fence, or so we thought. When I checked recently, fences are required to be five feet from the fence. The yard is about 50 x 60 and the one shed is 10 x 15. If I built a second shed the same size in the other corner, including the space between the sheds and the fences, they would occupy 600 square feet, out of 3,000. Having the backyard 20% shed sounds excessive, especially when half of that is space we cannot really use. Permits are not required for sheds less than 200 square feet, unless they have a water and\or electrical connection, and\or are attached to an existing structure. I am unsure what I could accomplish in an unheated and dark shed. I have considered adding onto the one shed so we did not need more wasted space, but if I could build an aircrete building for significantly less money and effort than an addition, why not? I figure that adding on would actually require more resources than building a second building. Anyway, I thought the aircrete not-shed was cool, and I would love to have my own space without distractions or people locking me out for no apparent reason. Have a great day! |
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I'm gathering materials for a portable car port that will be a 12x15 ft hexagon following this YT channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_NnY_yYwuc I once spent a few month with everything I owned in a 9x14 room. Dressers on top of dressers and tables on top of tables. |
I confess I didn't read this entire thread, but I saw many videos about aircrete, including many from Gaia and their ideas. I'm sure they can make bricks, but Gaya said they can also cast large aircrete things, like a arc with a horizontal piece in the middle, to be the window of their dome. It was larger than 1,5 meter high. The problem is that I saw a guy on youtube testing many foam agents for aicrete, and none was able to cast large forms without the foam be reduzed, so it created a dense aircrete in the lower portiongs and a more fragile aircrete (less dense) in the upper portions.
Unless they cast the large pieces in many steps, like a layer placed in the mols, some time to dry a bit, and another layer, and so on until finish, I think they can't cast a entire large or tal piece and or a dome in one step, as one video proposed when they talked about creat a large mold with interior art ornaments. Anyway Gaia said that a special fabric and a layer of portaland cement, after place the bricks and the shapew of dome be ready, can solve the problem of brittle . Gaia once in a video showed a mold to create curved shape bricks, and so reduce the needed amount of portland portland cement layer to give the smooth finish ot the dome. But I never saw a video of they using these curved brick to create a dome, but just a video of the curved bricks made in the mold. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_casting
Spin casting is done on a vertical axis for other reasons, but a mold that revolves slowly on a horizontal axis might prevent the settling you describe. |
Spin cast it's not viable for large pieces for home building.
I refer about his video of Gaia aircrete casting : https://youtu.be/SGaLOoFN0RU?t=229 See the large casting? How keep to foam instact to a uniform final aircrete? I think it's impossible to fill the mold in a single procedure. The curved bricks it's interesting, but I never saw any of their videos of workshop using it. Hey... How much costs basic portland cement on USA? I believe on Brazil the cost of portland cement it's about 55% than on USA. Need to confirm... Aircrete could be a great cost saving building technic for Brazil. Quote:
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Yesterday I looked into how much it costs to build a house in Mexico. It seems like it costs as much to build there as it should here, but I recently read that it costs significantly more to build in the U.S. than just ten years ago. I also read that in Mexico they do not build with wooden frames, but out of bricks.
Are bricks cheaper there than wood? I say that I am fluent in Spanish, but I do not have anywhere near the opportunities to practice that I want, and I do not see how I would pick up all of the common words otherwise. When I was in Basic another Spanish-speaking gringo asked the Spanish speakers "Would you just open your mouths when you speak?" I have elitist Spanish. I can only understand educated Spanish speakers. I remember hearing a guy at Harbor Freight and thinking "That is Spanish, right?" I did not understand a single word he said. I speak Spanish, but I would not try to build a house in Mexico on my own. I wonder how long it would take to find a company willing to build according to my strange gringo ideas. Meanwhile, fellow gringos would just say "Why don't you just build a frame house like everyone else?" If Honey-Do Carpenter built a 12 x 16 shed for $1,000, that means that you should be able to build a 20 x 20 garage for less than I paid for my Civic. If you built a house out of aircrete, would you make the interior walls out of the same stuff? You already have metal studs, which cost more than wood. How is this cheaper than wood and wall board? |
On Brazil we use mostly bricks and concrete, and wood just for the frame that holds the roof and for doors.
Wood it's not very cheap here, but I don't know the price of wood on USA. Workmanship on USA it's high compared to Brazil, even if the home building workmanship for home building on Brazil had rise considerable in the last 12 years. Brick house have good thermal insulation, and are safer in case of fire. But to lay bricks takes time, and also to layer the wall with finish in cement and a smooth finish in plaster. And time is $$$$... It's so much cement, sand, earth, that they start to talk about recycle, get the walls piece, after home demolition, and crush it until became like sand particles, and use asm ingredient for new homes. Here a 50kg bag of simple Portland cement costs 20 to 25 reals (5,12 to 6,1 dollars). How much a bag of portland cement costs on USA ??? https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/fair...-133927725.jpg China uses a lot of bamboo instead of steel, for many buildings. Maybe aircrete could use bamboo strips inside the aircrete molds. |
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Instead of casting an whole arch, a three-hinged arch would be more manageable. |
Bricks are small, so there is no problem of relevant diferences in density of aircrete along the top to the bottom.
How much costs a standart bag of portland cement on USA? Bamboo reinforced concrete : https://theconstructor.org/structura...ruction/15054/ Quote:
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You would have to cast large pieces laying down in a mold, let them dry fully then hoist them vertical after the fact.
Handling a big piece that weighs thousands of pounds is likely not an at home proposition without some sort of hoist, crane or cantilever |
Can we review what Aircrete is?
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https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1513352478 At Permalink #6 I suggested pumping aircrete through a nozzle in a 3D printer. edit: Three minute difference. Don't you know more about aircrete than the rest of us? 'nuther edit: I posted this in another thread: https://www.designboom.com/wp-conten...boom-600-1.jpg https://www.designboom.com/wp-conten...boom-600-1.jpg There would be some cure time between passes of the print head. Maybe it could be followed by an infrared curing head to speed up the process. |
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