Digital Building Technologies has completed a research collaboration with Sika on spatial 3D printing using a rapid-curing material.

Most large-scale extrusion printing in architecture still builds objects as stacks of horizontal layers. This project investigated a material that cures fast enough to be deposited directly along a spatial path. The high-strength SikaBiresin® MC90 developed by Sika cures within about two minutes after it is extruded, allowing printed strands to follow inclined, cantilevered, and unsupported paths without formwork.

The work was developed as part of the Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture and Digital Fabrication thesis of Nadja Milas and Yu-Syuan Li, supervised by a team from DBT and Sika. Through a series of free-form extrusion experiments, the team examined material and robotic process parameters and a variety of toolpath planning strategies. The experiments showed that print stability depends strongly on print path design and toolhead inclination, and that well-designed paths can be printed with little to no deformation, sagging, or shrinkage.

These fabrication limits were built into a computational workflow that connects material behaviour, geometry, robot motion, and printing parameters. The workflow generates continuous non-planar print paths with feed rates and nozzle orientations adapted to the local geometry. The resulting components showcase lightweight spatial lattice structures expressing a fabrication-informed approach to material-efficient architectural elements.