#kuka-prc

Three-dimensional concrete printing (3DCP) is an innovative digital fabrication and automation technique based on additive manufacturing that enables the creation of complex and customized structures in the architecture and construction industry. Its most notable advantages include eliminating formwork costs and labor (Buswell et al., 2020; Lyu et al., 2021; Kaliyavaradhan et al., 2022) and facilitating the fabrication of structural elements with complex curvatures, particularly in printing systems utilizing industrial robotic arms (Alabbasi et al., 2023; De Soto et al., 2018)….

We continued the previous week’s experiments with Efecan. Using the sandblasting tool, we started performing point and line tests. The Grasshopper script I developed for this process is below. It allows us to move the gun along defined paths or execute target shots at specific points. To mount the IBIX pressurized gun onto the Kuka KR-20 model robot, I 3D-printed a custom adapter using PETG. Although it required a bit of force, the gun fits tightly into the adapter; it…

Last month, we completed the third edition of the Robotic Earthcrafts workshop series, which I co-organized with Fulya Akipek, following the first in 2018 and the second in 2023. An earthen mixture composed of clayey soil, lime, fibers, and cement was rammed into molds produced via robotic hot-wire cutting. The geometry of the fabricated wall is based on a hexagonal grid and features a Truchet-like variation. Constructed using four different block types, the wall was completed within 5 days and…

The 2025 IAAC Istanbul Summer school was conducted at İstanbul Bilgi University last year. Yesterday, a video was published about it on YouTube. It was prepared by Arkitekt. Here is the video: This reminded me the workshop and I decided to write about my side of the study. The reciprocal structure was designed by Gamze Gündüz, where she finalized it using a Grasshopper code. Then, the timber elements were labeled and sized with the help of Grasshopper again and integrated…

Today, Efecan and I attached the sandblasting device to the robotic arm. The device sprays a special sandblasting material onto surfaces using air pressure. Thus, it is used for cleaning moldy and dirty surfaces in buildings under restoration. Under normal conditions, the sandblasting gun is controlled manually. If the cleaning is too light, it remains insufficient, but it shouldn’t be so intense as to erode the stone either. Normally, the operator performs this control visually. Here, the potential uses for…

This is the new paper with Meryem Nurefşan Yabanigül, published at Automation in Construction. It is also Meryem’s master’s thesis. This study is about testing the production of curved surfaces with non-linear robotic hotwire cutting and shape memory alloys. Below is the abstract of it: Robotic arms are being used by construction firms and schools of architecture around the world in design/build research and material studies. Some of these studies utilize robotic hot wire cutting (RHC) as an efficient production…

Today, we have studied creating complex robot programs manually again. Platonic solids were the subject of this study. Students tried to create a sequence of robot moves that produces a Platonic solid out of a 17cm EPS cube. We simply call this the robotic hotwire cutting polyhedra exercise. However, the size of our hotwire cutter became one of the problems because of its risk of crashing. We crashed several times but managed to cut some polyhedra at the end of…