by Holly Riddle
X-Hab 3D’s new mobile, semi-autonomous, concrete printing system | Image Credits: Bruce Kraselsky LinkedIn
In 2022, HappyValley Industry covered the beginnings of a startup that had recently found a home in CATO Park. X-Hab 3D, originally born from a NASA Centennial Challenge and the work of Penn State researchers, focuses on developing expeditionary-grade, mobile 3D concrete printers and, at the time of prior coverage, the company had received a DARPA grant to develop carbon-neutral material formulations for artificial reefs along coastlines.
We caught up with Bruce Kraselsky, co-founder and CEO of X-Hab 3D, to learn how the company has grown since and what’s on the horizon.
Pushing the edge on technology
According to Kraselsky, X-Hab 3D’s progress over the last two years has been “huge” and can be split into three categories: technology development, government R&D projects and showcase projects.
“We’ve taken the stationary robot technology that Penn State had developed… and we have taken that technology as a baseline, and developed, now, a complete, semi-autonomous, mobile self-powered robotic arm platform that can essentially move about the construction site on its own…built for operating on challenging terrains just about anywhere on the planet,” he said.
X-Hab 3D’s new mobile, semi-autonomous, concrete printing system | Video Credits: Bruce Kraselsky LinkedIn
X-Hab 3D has sold two of the units thus far, one to the Maryland Air National Guard, which will be able to deploy the unit to 3D print everything from barracks to runway repairs on remote islands. The other unit was sold to Alaskan nonprofit Extreme Habitats, where it will be used as part of a project to build rural, affordable housing and infrastructure.
Recently, the Maryland Air National Guard showcased their unit on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and the other unit set to go to Alaska will be demonstrated over the summer before a test run will demonstrate how the unit can print materials to withstand the harsh Alaskan winters; afterward, the unit will be used to print a 1,200-square-foot house.
“We’re also going to be demonstrating the technology as it applies to agricultural products,” Kraselsky added. “We’re going to be showcasing the printer at Ag Progress [Days] at Penn State in August, and we’re building a 1,200-square-foot house in either the last quarter of this year or the first half of next year with Habitat for Humanity in Centre County.”
The potential for X-Hab 3D’s robotic products is extensive.
Kraselsky said, “The beauty of our mobile robot is that it really and truly could drive right through your fence, into your backyard, and it could print for you a, let’s say, if you had a skidsteer and the hole is dug, swimming pool. It could print yard furniture. It could print a small in-law house in your backyard if you wanted it to, and it would roll in under its own power. It could operate completely off the grid. It doesn’t even need an external power source to operate. You just need a barrel of water and the material, and we’re developing technology that will continue to reduce the size of the platform and increase the precision of the print. So, you’re not limited to concrete. You can print wood pulp. You could print chocolate with this thing.”
3D printed structure | Video Credits: Bruce Kraselsky LinkedIn
He added, “The other thing is that it is a fully programmable robot, so you can take the 3D concrete printing nozzle off and replace it with a tool changer. There are a couple dozen things that you can do with this robot. You could spray-paint your house. You could weld.”
That said, the one challenge that Kraselsky said his team has come up against has been making all of the above “really, really simple” for the consumer. X-Hab 3D uses complex technology at the hardware, software and materials levels. However, they want to make their solutions so easy and simple to use that the customer feels as if they were purchasing a car — just drive it off the lot and you’ll more or less know what to do.
Growing deep roots in Centre County
Through all of this development and progress, though, Kraselsky said that the most exciting part of the last two years has been the collaborations made possible via the Happy Valley ecosystem and, more specifically, Penn State.
“We’ve pulled together an extraordinary team of scientists from Penn State and the surrounding area,” he said. “I have structural engineers on my team. I have a rockstar material scientists. I have computational designers and architectural engineers, all together. When you have all these different disciplines in one place, it’s a catalyst for innovation, and we’re really pushing the edge on technology. To me, that’s the most exciting part.”
He admitted it would be far more difficult to have achieved X-Hab 3D’s success thus far if the company had started anywhere else, and also mentioned how helpful it’s been to have a talent pool of Penn State graduates to pull from, as the business expands.
“It was absolutely the right decision to locate here,” he said.
When looking to the future, Kraselsky’s team sets its sights high with the goal of becoming the Caterpillar of 3D concrete printing systems. Five years from now, Kraselsky said, he sees X-Hab 3D as a multi-hundred-million dollar company, with an entire series of mobile robotic products for the construction industry, and an international footprint.
He summed up, “We are truly standing up a new industry sector in construction, and that means that we have to stand up an ecosystem for support, with Penn State and other Pennsylvania universities, along with Ben Franklin and our industrial partners that we’ve managed to pull together so far, at the core. We’re trying to use Pennsylvania in general and State College in particular as an anchor, where we grow deep roots. We want to build an ecosystem here and then build out from here, ultimately regionally, and then nationally and then globally. We think that the economic development opportunities, the academic growth opportunities and the technology opportunities for this area are huge for us, and they’re huge for Penn State. For the contracts that we’ve won with DARPA, NASA and HUD, Penn State is a subcontractor on all of them, and we’ve already, for example, with those contracts, contributed somewhere between $1 million and $2 million, back to Penn State, even as a startup.”
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