Local engineer’s product surpasses big corporations and wins award
FORT BRAGG >> Fort Bragg resident Michael Butler, a civil engineer, and design/build contractor, won the Most Innovative Product Award at the 2023 World of Concrete International Exhibition. In the category of concrete construction materials, Butler demonstrated his personally developed 3D-Admix product for concrete and earned the most votes in a field of twenty competitors including BASF, one of the largest corporations in the world.
Butler has applied for patents in the United States and Europe for 3D-Admix, an organic additive that noticeably modifies concrete. When his 3D-Admix is injected into the pumping line, the concrete slurry becomes an easily shapeable material that radically improves the process of creating vertical walls that can repeatedly be quickly vibrated down as fast as you can pump it.
Butler describes vertical concrete construction as more expensive “than anything else. It’s physically grueling. Concrete is heavy and form pressure is heavy.” he added, “I became obsessed with how to make this easier.” What began as an experiment in 2009 in his garage became a fourteenyear commitment to achieve his goal. He credits Bob Jerrell, now deceased, with keeping the mechanical end of things working for him.
To date, the most common process of creating vertical concrete walls requires the time and expense of building the forms the concrete will be poured into. Large infrastructure projects applied the concrete via the shotcrete method, the process of shooting concrete at high pressure and volume onto a form. However, it requires skilled labor and is now noted for its extreme health hazards due to workers’ exposure to silica dust.
3D printing of concrete walls has taken hold, but concrete is a heavy fluid. Getting it to conform to the desired shape requires an expensive, specialized mortar. Butler’s product eliminates the need for the high concentration of cement needed for 3D printing or the use of fine powder mortars. Use of regular Portland cement and less of it saves costs, reduces carbon dioxide in the air, and eliminates the additional expense of specialized products transported to the work site from the factory. The mix also works well with cement replacements required in California.
Since forming is the biggest cost in concrete construction, Butler notes that the use of his product for 3D printing means “no more forms, thinner walls, less concrete, use of normal rebar, and faster slip forming. He sees 3D-Admix as ideal for basement construction, elevator shafts, wind turbine towers, and even disaster-resistant housing. The mixture not only provides an ideal concentration for 3D printing but also has a few other attributes.
Butler sees the goals of concrete construction as constant competition. Concrete has a tendency to crack and absorb moisture. “Construction has three competing factors,” he said, “affordability vs thermal performance vs structural performance. How to get all three is what is driving me.” His modified concrete does not crack at all and there is also no shrinkage. Fibers bond so that delayed shrinkage later won’t happen. “Shrinkage is more important to me than strength,” Butler said.
Enhanced thermal performance can prevent condensation in the walls and keep heat in via rigid foam insulation without wood or steel forming the wall structure. With new development in 3D printing and equipment, Butler believes a warm and dry building can be erected if the construction sequence is changed. Windows, doors, electrical outlets, a rain screen, and insulation can all be set in prior to the layered concrete process so that no cutting afterward creates new gaps to plug.
Butler has a finished concrete test building to prove his claims. The concrete, he said “never touches the earth, the water, or the air,” he said. “It has a conditioned environment. The footings were also poured on insulation which is common in Europe.” He added, “This method could really help with the rebuild of Ukraine and Turkey where all the housing has been destroyed because it can do it faster and better and meet the seismic standards readily.”
Winning an innovation award shows the big corporations that he is not a crackpot. He noted, “I’m in a middle ground needing tech and hardware elements of construction to see the possibilities.” The hesitancy of corporations to consider use of his mixture may have more to do with requiring extensive changes in their current software systems. As Butler puts it, “Why innovate when you’re already making money on what you have?”
On the other hand, faster, greener, less expensive construction with his product seems a better way to go in spite of what corporate research and development and 3D printing hardware have come up with so far. Butler said, “I just see it as a puzzle, and I’ve been working on this puzzle. That’s where my skills are.” He added that the industry had it backward. The question for him is “What is the ideal building?” The answer, he says, is “Let’s build the machines to build the building the way you want it.”
For more detailed information about Butler’s design and process procedures, go to spacecrete. com.