Blog
The Technology and Business behind Concrete 3D Printing
My interest in concrete started even before I got to college. The summer after my junior year in high school, I took a course on Computer Aided Design and 3D printing. One of the topics I got to investigate in this course was how 3D printing with concrete is currently being integrated into the construction industry. This sparked an interest that would extend well beyond the duration of this class.
When I got to the University of Illinois, I was not expecting to do research my freshman year. But when I learned one of my professors had just purchased a concrete 3D printer, I had to reach out! A couple of weeks later, I was put on his team and my journey with undergraduate research began. Most of my early work dealt with creating extrudable mixes for the 3D printer. My team spent a great deal of time working with the new machine to understand its components, advantages and limitations. This was the first time I got to physically work with concrete, and it was very exciting! I was introduced to its fundamental components, the mixing process, G-code and even superplasticizer. Creating a viable extrudable mix was an enjoyable challenge since there were so many properties that had to be accounted for.
While doing this work, I began to think about the business side of this technology. I remember hearing about it in the fifth grade, but it didn’t seem like it had really taken off yet. Was it marketed wrong? Was it too expensive? Why wasn’t every construction group in America buying these amazing machines? At the time, I did not have a good enough understanding of the process of bringing new technologies to market to answer these questions.
After my initial research was completed, I decided I wanted to continue working in this area. I loved being in the lab and was excited to have the opportunity to work with this new technology. I then became a research assistant for a PhD candidate who is investigating the effects of vibration on the rheology of concrete for 3D printing purposes. In layman’s terms, we investigated how vibrating the nozzle of the printer so concrete can flow (instead of using a plunging mechanism) affected the printed material. I greatly enjoyed this research and I believe it has the potential to make a meaningful contribution to development in infrastructure.
At the time I began this research, I also started taking a technology and management course at the University of Illinois. One week’s topic was titled “The Finances of Product Development”, and I began to form the answers I had previously asked myself as to why this technology hadn’t really “taken off” yet.
The lesson for that week referenced the “Valley of Death”: a term coined by the TED-Ed video “Why good ideas get trapped in the valley of death – and how to rescue them”. This expression describes the last part of the product development cycle, where projects lose money and momentum due to lack of investment. The video presented multiple examples of machines and technology that have the potential to have positive effects on the population, but how investors are hesitant to fund these projects because the initial investments are so expensive.
The technology of 3D printing with concrete has so much potential to make a positive difference. From a material and labor standpoint, printing a house is significantly cheaper than building a traditional one. Around the world, 3D printing could be used to quickly create weather resilient homes for people relocated suddenly due to conflict. From an environmental perspective, it significantly cuts construction waste and is paving the way for more sustainable infrastructure. And yet, the technology has existed since the 1990s and the field hasn’t grown much. Why? Like the examples given in the video, I believe that it is somewhat stuck in the “valley of death”.
I think one of the main reasons, as referenced in the video, is that the initial investment is too large. A single printer can cost anywhere from $200K to $1 million. For a smaller construction company, this cost may be too much to begin with. For larger firms, while it may be a viable purchase, using this technology would require dramatic reconfiguration of their construction processes and schedules. As it is now, industrial sized 3D printers are too much of an investment for it to become a “mainstream” method of construction. We need to figure out a way to seamlessly integrate this technology into already existing projects, while finding ways to reduce the upfront cost of these machines.
P.S. If you want to learn more about my research, click on my "Projects" tab
Business Lessons from Panhellenic Primary Recruitment
I have no shame in saying I joined my sorority purely for the social aspect. I wanted to have a set of friends and experiences completely different from my engineering peers. What I did not expect were the parallels I could draw between the lessons taught by my sorority and my professional development classes.
At the start of my first semester of sophomore year, I began taking the T&M seminar course, which focused on professional development and acted as an introduction to the Hoeft Technology and Management Program at the University of Illinois. This seminar style course brought in a panel of industry experts each week to speak on a certain topic relating to technology and management.
Around the same time, Panhellenic Primary Recruitment (often called “Rush”) began. This process, which is spread over two weekends in September, is the biggest recruitment cycle for sororities. It is a mutual selection process between Potential New Members (PNMs) who are usually freshman, and all 19 panhellenic houses on campus. There are four rounds, each with short, interview-like conversations between PNMs and members of a particular sorority, which are used to evaluate fit. By the end of this process, PNMs are matched with a house, and they receive a bid.
As a sophomore, this was my first time on the recruiting side. When I was informed by our Director of Primary Recruitment that everyone had to be on campus a week early to prepare for recruitment, I laughed. How much preparation did this really need? At the end of the day, it’s just having a lot of shallow conversations with girls and finding out if they are nice or not, right?
Wrong. Over the course of that week, I was given more lessons on how to communicate and evaluate people than I ever could have imagined. We were put through workshops on how to read body language, how to make out a PNM’s personality based on choice of words and how to never let a conversation die. My chapter conducted a needs assessment, which produced a list of qualities that we were looking for in potential new members. I learned how to evaluate a PNM’s ability to fit these needs based their responses to questions.
As I went through the semester and attended more of my seminar class, I was surprised at how similar some of the lessons I was learning in the course and the lessons I learned during recruitment were. A few of my favorites are listed below.
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Success in Interviews
The seminar class titled “Interviewing Like a Pro” brought in panelists who worked on the recruiting side of their company. They gave insight into what recruiters look for in candidates. One of the panelists, Malisa Harriott, a Global HR Director for John Deere, explained she looks for genuity and emotional intelligence during interviews. She also emphasized the importance of directly answering the interviewer’s question. This class could not have come at a better time, as just four hours later, I was sitting across from a PNM acting as an interviewer. I thought back to the needs assessment my house had put together, which included that genuine factor, as well as an ability to “read the room”. I was looking for the same things that Melissa had described! After asking the PNM what her favorite hobbies were and receiving a heavily rehearsed response about her leadership qualities, awards and honors (which had nothing to do with my question), I decided she may not be a great fit for the house.
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The Importance of an Online Presence
The first topic covered in the T&M Seminar Course was on how to develop your professional brand. A reading assignment from that week titled “Publishing your Work Increases Your Luck” by Aaron Francis, described the importance of sharing your work online. This, in theory, leads to a greater chance of potential employers or business partners wanting to form connections.
In a similar way, my sorority continually emphasized the importance of our social media accounts before and during recruitment season. Like one would publish their work to increase their chances of making connections, we published media (Instagram posts and Tik Toks) to give PNMs insight into what the chapter was like and helping them form a positive impression of us.
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Communicating with People of Different Backgrounds
The T&M seminar class gives students the option to talk to panelists before and after class. I had the opportunity to speak with Liz Riordan, a Divisional VP at Abbott before class one day. We discussed how her work had taken her to India, China and other parts of the globe and how learning to connect and communicate with people from diverse backgrounds had brought her tremendous success in her career.
While talking with Liz, I had flashbacks to recruitment. Over the course of those two weekends, I had conversations with more than 40 girls, each with a different background and a different style of communicating. Now, I understand “diverse” is probably not the best term to describe the cohort of girls going through primary recruitment at a school in the Mid-West, especially compared to Liz’s experiences abroad. But still, having these conversations and trying to find things in common with girls I had never met before was a great exercise. I learned how to adapt my style of conversing to make the PNM feel comfortable.
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I believe that the lessons I’ve learned from both the T&M Seminar and Panhellenic Primary Recruitment have made me into a strong communicator. I am sure that the skills I have learned from both experiences will benefit me greatly in my future career.