
Apis Cor builds world's largest 3D-printed building in Dubai - lelf
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/12/22/apis-cor-worlds-largest-3d-printed-building-dubai/
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thdrdt
It's almost poetic how the robot uses one of the most primitive forms of
building a 'hut': stacking layers of mud.

I believe a combination of printing prefab pieces at the site in a controlled
environment could also be a great possibility.

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baybal2
Apis cor had some dealing with Samsung I remember. To me, they felt almost
like marketing shop for their partners than a genuine engineering company.

When I voiced something about their engineering during an event, they weren't
really able to reply with anything other than recital of their marketing.

IMHO, in its current iteration, 3d printed building are completely nonviable
commercially.

The main point of 3d is to expensive, and error prone manual labour with a
single pass automated process. 3D printed buildings as of now require more
labour, more operations, and more materials than most conventional building
techniques.

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monkmartinez
If we are still thinking of a house that has hidden wires in the walls and
plumbing that is hidden in walls.... Then yes, printed homes as they are
currently are not going to work.

If we embrace exposed conduit, exposed ducting and exposed plumbing lines,
printed homes could be an order of magnitude cheaper.

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baybal2
What about getting a house with conduits for hvac, electric, and plumbing, and
still get it cheaper than 3d?

Construction technologies to make lowrise housing super duper cheap are
already here: panels, lgsf, large prefabs, light concretes

And for really tall highrises, they are already coming within 50-40% of their
materials costs in Asian countries. So for them, it will make no difference
even in the most optimistic case.

You can't do much physically about price of steel and cement, other than
finding ways to use less of them.

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throwawaysea
I don’t understand why these are considered notable. A building is a lot more
than simply the concrete. In fact I would say that pouring the concrete is not
that difficult or time-consuming. There’s a lot of work that comes before,
such as excavation and compaction and grading. There’s a lot more work comes
after to rough in plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc. And then of course the
finishing.

So what is the net benefit of this process?

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monkmartinez
If you could own a $10000 dollar machine where you add concrete and a sd-
card... then it printed a new room for your house, wouldn't that be
revolutionary?

I don't know how much these machines will cost in the future, but I do know
that I would love to have one. Construction is very expensive even for houses
that are basically sticks and stucco. I would like to buy some land and print
a house with modules for plumbing, electrical, etc. This enables a complete
rethink of how we currently build homes.

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paleontocracy
No. In that sense, you can already just give a guy at the Home Depot $500 to
“add a new room to your house”. Are you living the revolution?

If construction is labor-intensive and expensive, stick framing is the
cheapest and easiest part. If you come up with an automated solution that
replaces the need for expensive interior finishing processes, you’ll have a
huge market... finishing out existing stick-framed construction. No one
selling houses wants this.

If you want to use modern technology to mass-produce homes with less labor,
that’s called prefabricated construction and it’s a process that’s only about
a _thousand_ years old. Someday robots will do it all automatically on-site
but we’re no where near doing that in the foreseeable future, in part because
the demands on houses are predictably rising at pace with the capabilities of
robots.

I don’t mean to be snide, but this is a little like dropping by a homebuilding
forum and they’re all talking about how some day soon desktop PCB fabrication
is going to replace all of Silicon Valley, because they don’t _quite_ know the
difference between a chip and a circuit board. It’s just embarrassing, y’all.

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baybal2
> If you come up with an automated solution that replaces the need for
> expensive interior finishing processes

There is already a large panel prefab process, which is highly automated,
including finishing, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere near "revolutionising"
the industry.

The thing is, in North America the preference for single family houses is so
strong that making people care about extra $100k is really hard.

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jelliclesfarm
I spoke to one of the founders to explore opportunities and partnerships with
my professional network.

They are not consumer facing. They are looking for partnerships and
investment.

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Razengan
Lots of cynicism in the comments here, but what the potential applications of
a technology like this on the Moon or Mars?

