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Building a HomeDIY
mortarart

Formwork anyone can make

James Rowlands
last year
last modified: last year

I am currently developing tooling in order to produce formwork for the construction industry, out of recycled plastic. If you're not aware; formwork is the structure builders use to contain concrete when they pour it, to produce the desired shape. Most formwork is made from timber still, often with laminating, and the timber degrades each time that it's used, as builders cut it to length, drill and bolt in to it. Due to the lamination, the timber usually becomes a waste product, as it's costly to recycle.



Pictured above; and early production formwork brick & a 1:4 scale model of concrete formwork


My project aims to demonstrate how to take plastics that we currently don't have enough recycling solutions for, and to form them into large bricks, using simple to assemble steel moulds.



The tooling in the above picture was assembled from approximately $300 in steel and some heater elements purchased from Ebay


I've currently got a conditional offer of funding to help me produce enough of this formwork to start building demo structures. I'm required by the funding source to document all the tooling and use of the formwork "open source" so that anyone who wants to can replicate what I've done. However, I'm also required to demonstrate that builders would be interested to trial this formwork. If you work in the sector, or know someone who does, who might find utility in this project, please get in touch.

Featured Answer
  • James Rowlands
    Original Author
    last year

    Hey! Those are really good comments. So there's a few ways to address 'bowing' which is where a form deflects due to the static load of concrete over a long span. The most common one is to have bolts running through the concrete, which secure to the outer sides of the forms. Allthread is what is commonly used for this. You may have seen little round marks on concrete walls before. These are where the bolts were. That's why the concrete in those spots looks a bit different.


    However, sometimes it's not desireable to have those marks left over. In that case you have other options. The simplest is to 'fill as you form' so to speak. You put up the formwork slowly, while filling the concrete. That way the concrete down low is setting, while the concrete on top is wet enough to bond with the new concrete you're adding. This requires a good sense of timing, and is possibly most suitable to small teams happy to use an onsite mixer rather than a truck.


    And finally, you can install external bracing. This is only mildly represented in the above render.


    As for shearing loads on corner teeth ... I also included some flat metal bar and all thread to give a sense of how this could be addressed. Alternatively, corners could be built out of additional bricks, like the little 'bracing' structure demonstrated in the render.


    At this stage all of the above is just theoretical. We're yet to produce enough full sized bricks to test it, but I will be carrying that out over the coming months, and reporting back with detailed drawings and photographs.

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