this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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To be fair, you don't need a very huge 3D printer for that, if you divide it into a lot of smaller parts which can be assembled later.
Idk, if we can already print steel though and whether we can make it structually sufficiently stable.
So our proposal is we prefab a bunch of metal pieces and assemble them on-site?
As opposed to our current method where we carve bridges out of a big block of metal?
Hahahaha absolutely. :D The difference is, that they come from a 3D printer and that's cool.
Well no, you put a conveyor belt in front of all the 3d printers, and when each part is done, it's dumped onto the conveyor belt, which leads all the pieces to an AI powered robot arm which assembles the bridge.
Yeah, I guess you could just run the conveyor belt and arm all the way to where the bridge needs to go.
All problems can be reduced to Factorio.
Where's the train? Why is there no train in the solution?
The bridge is science to unlock the train, of course.
Seriously, how we make bridges now with giant CNC machines is so inefficient! And all these people saying we should print lots of blocks to put together are totally forgetting about Legos, we all just need to donate our old Legos to Baltimore and let kids from anywhere come volunteer to build it. Free bridge and free child labour! Everyone wins
I find it difficult to believe that breaking down steel to be 3d printed into large structures for a bridge is faster or more energy efficient than casting the parts instead.
Steel beams get extruded and rolled, or... 3D printed with a large custom-shaped hot end! π€―
https://youtu.be/lHTq-zLk-fw
We can indeed print steel with direct metal laser sintering. I think that the object needs heat treatment afterwards, though to be fair it is almost ten years since I properly read up on it and things have probably advanced since then
Maybe, we could just print off rectangular prism-shaped modules, around the right size to fit in a hand, and then assemble them on site. We could even make them out of ordinary clay and fire them for strength. I wonder why nobody has thought of that. /s
3D printing has it's place, but more conventional methods have theirs too. If you are counting on a lot of human labour anyway you might as well not reinvent the wheel.
OP said use AI, not humans... /s