
A Printer That Can Print a 2,500 Square Foot House in 20 Hours - newsmaster
http://www.industrytap.com/the-printer-that-can-print-a-house-in-20-hours/9056
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JoeAltmaier
Hm. A whole house, except the flooring, walls, wiring, plumbing, windows,
roofing, lighting, heck anything but the bare frame and walls. You can already
do that, prefab, in a few hours. This is custom, but so is prefab.

The problem is the usual: a single material isn't enough to make anything but
the simple constructs. Almost everything is complex these days. Materials
Science hasn't been a science for a century for nothing.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Prefab needs a factory to make the prefab sections.

Also, you can lay down multiple materials by making the head swappable. I
would also say plumbing and electrics are nowhere near as complex as they used
to be. Everything is available as clip-on fittings these days, which is
perfect for automation.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You don't even need to be a plumber to do plumbing; PVC the whole thing.

~~~
maxerickson
Correct slopes and various other things to meet code are a lot harder than
joints.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Getting the angle right is easy if all the plumbing is specified as a
parametric model then machine cut, getting it wrong would be more tricky.

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ChuckMcM
Sigh, if this guy had an actual 3D printer he would realize those doors and
windows are a no-go :-) More seriously, there are unsolved issues in printing
unsupported structures, the current best solution is a second 'support'
material that can be dissolved/blown away once the part is completed but that
rules out voids which are part of what you hope to make with this sort of
thing.

Also as others point out this is just the frame (and if you do the robotic
crane thing you can add a roof. You might also be able to use your robotic
crane to do joists for overhangs but the finish suffers as your joist material
is exposed on the underside.

No doubt solvable problems but they take away from some of the 'magicalness'
of fused deposition printing. Stereo lithography where the part is neutrally
bouyant in the construction fluid doesn't have those issues but it has other
issues associated with strength and material choices that can be laser
activated.

For now doing a concrete lay-up would be pretty killer but building the forms
on site isn't that hard and in both cases you need to transport the concrete
at the last minute.

Bottom line I think the stuff that BluHomes [1] is doing is much more creative
than trying to do this with 3D printing.

[1] [http://www.bluhomes.com/](http://www.bluhomes.com/)

~~~
sologoub
Just read the info on the "Why Blu" page as the photos look intriguing, but as
soon as the page mentioned "pre-fab", it became a non-start for me in the
SoCal market.

The problem is that pre-fabricated or pre-manufactured homes are a very
specific category of homes and require specific disclosures when selling and
financing. It's basically a derogatory term used to describe cheaply built
structures that are a step above mobile homes.

Home being one of the most valuable assets a typical family holds. In SoCal
and many other places, land makes up the bulk of the value. Place a structure
on that land that then detracts from the value doesn't seem very prudent. Not
to mention difficult to finance, as banks do not look favorably on that class
of building.

So, unfortunately, innovation has to deal with current market and regulatory
frameworks. 3D printing as proposed (though my not be valuable), would
probably fall under the "custom house" label, which is the most valuable
classification. Even if it's just a tract home, it's still a lot better than
being considered pre-fab/pre-manufactured.

~~~
tdiggity
Prefab and preamnufactured homes are different. Premanufactured homes are also
known as mobile homes. There are probably a lot of prefab homes around you
that you never knew about.

~~~
sologoub
While I agree that it's not exactly the same, the only definition I could find
is the one for manufactured homes in CA:
[http://law.onecle.com/california/health/18007.html](http://law.onecle.com/california/health/18007.html).

The above definition lumps them together and unfortunately if there isn't
something that makes the home not fall under that definition, you are going to
have to disclose this at sale and financing will be a PITA...

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brokentone
Interesting, but this still has the classic issue where the "printer has to be
larger than the object printed." A few weeks back I got a tour of MIT's media
lab, where they have a robot arm they're strapping to a bucket truck, in which
case they have a mobile, 3D printer with a 100 foot wingspan.

This arm has an attachment for a polyurethane foam sprayer, a milling device,
and a paint sprayer. In which case they can spray out a concrete form, mill it
to get more precise (urethane foam is a bit imprecise), and paint it.

Then they want to get a series of these trucks to work together in a "hive"
format... crazy kids.

~~~
DanBC
> Then they want to get a series of these trucks to work together in a "hive"
> format... crazy kids.

The crazy bit is sending that hive to Mars to build accommodation units for
settlers.

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ohwp
The 3d visuals of this printer have been on the internet for more than a year
but there are still no pictures and movies of a working version.

Concrete printing is not new so I wonder what is keeping them from building
the printer over a year later.

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oilytheotter
Did you see the video and pictures of the printer in the video? It wasn't full
scale, but it wasn't far off either.

~~~
ohwp
Yes I've seen the video's (a year ago). That's why I wonder why they didn't
built a house already. They have the knowledge and tech.

Some speculation: maybe it's very hard to print concrete out in the open with
all kinds of weather messing up the print. Or companies just don't believe in
the benefits so investors are hard to find.

~~~
jared314
I remember reading that D-Shape[1] had clogging problems with their printer.
Perhaps CC has the same issue.

[1]
[http://www.d-shape.com/tecnologia.htm](http://www.d-shape.com/tecnologia.htm)

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jguimont
Wonder how building's made like this can withstand the cold. In Canada or
northern US we do not construct houses and building the same way that southern
countries do. For example, exterior walls are 1' wide with an R value of close
to 30, most houses have a basement that is below the freezing line, etc.

~~~
bnolsen
Foundation work won't change. You'll have to have digging equipment and lay
concrete/masonry blocks for the base so this equipment can be used to print
the rest of the house. The fun part of course will be how easy it is to
position one of these house printers where you have a 7+% grade.

Another thing too. How does one recover if the printer screws up or worse yet
the program loaded is the wrong one or somehow corrupted? That could generate
a whole house's worth of concrete waste.

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JonSkeptic
"Construction is the most hazardous job. It is more dangerous than mining and
agriculture."

Interesting if true. I had no idea.

~~~
angersock
Yep.

Even for just houses: consider framing, or doing roof work--walking around on
joists is not really safe.

~~~
jlgreco
Is it more dangerous in terms of injuries, or in terms of deaths? I would
expect injuries to be very frequent, but frequent deaths would surprise me.

~~~
DanBC
Here's the website for the UK Health and Safety Executive.

[http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/industry/index.htm](http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/industry/index.htm)

There are not so many people mining, and there are ridiculously strict
regulations around mining. (I used to build, inspect, test 'chock interface
units' which can be thought of as 'active walking pit props'. A cutting head
removes a long stretch of coal, which falls onto a conveyor. That new section
needs to be pit-propped, so this first line walks forward with the cutting
head.)

Farming has many accidents - busy people, lots of opportunity for accident.
Also a high rate of suicide. (Again, access to means and methods. Farmers are
one of the small number of people allowed to own guns in the UK.)

It would be interesting to see the number of deaths per 1,000 workers for each
sector, to try and get a better comparison.

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marincounty
As the owner of a physibles domain name, and hopefully one day a company;
fanciful stories like this are a bit too soon. Actually, I hope we never have
to resort to living in manufactured houses. The overly strict building codes
and approval processes in the U.S. might bring this kind of building a reality
though. Right now, I think we need to work on ending homelessness. Yes, build
pyramids in the middle of the country where land is still cheap. Nothing
fancy, but livable. Kinda like kibbutzes, but on a much larger scale.

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VladRussian2
now if there were a printer that could print a 5000 sq feet lot for the house,
with all the building permits approved, kickbacks/bribes/political donations
paid and utilities connected...

The 3D printed houses will be a life-saver on Moon and Mars though.

~~~
prawn
Or for regional/rural areas, building stalls for animals or shelters or even
simple holiday houses. Or emergency or refugee accommodation.

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lifeisstillgood
I wrote a bit about this and it's implications some years back -
[http://www.ciocookbook.com/philosophy/thecodeisthedesign.htm...](http://www.ciocookbook.com/philosophy/thecodeisthedesign.html),
and the Times has reported on a group working on concrete printing - but as is
pointed out here, it's very hard - but on e the basics are in, well software
eats another industry

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angersock
So, I realize that the return on investment for VCs in something like this is
probably pretty low--the AEC industry is terrible (though real estate is
alright).

That said, can we at least be honest that having that much capital locked up
in stupid consumer and enterprise gambles is actually a pretty obviously sub-
optimal use of that money for the common good?

~~~
6d0debc071
So, you, as venture-capital-extraordinaire, spend all your money on helping
the poor. Maybe you do better in the short term. But what do you do once that
money's gone? There's no long-term in that picture and charity for developing
nations is not a short-term endeavour.

Meanwhile, trivial enterprise and consumer products may not be going to uplift
a country any time soon, but they can be recursed upon, and the technologies
involved in those industries - which have a wide range of potential
applications, including some charitable potential - continue to advance.

It doesn't make any sense to build a system based on what you would like
people to be rather than what they are. And for better or worse people's
relatively direct purchasing of utilions for others tends to be both fairly
rare and inefficient.

#

I'd be interested to hear how you think CAM and computing technology would
have evolved without funding for 'stupid consumer gambles,' and the need to
compete with other manufacturers in that regard.

~~~
angersock
CAM machining advancements were mostly pushed forward by car companies and
government spending, right? Almost all of the computing technology we use
today began as a .gov or .mil project, or came from some private lab with
funding from the .gov or .mil.

I think that that rather neatly undermines your point.

It wasn't the VCs spending lots of money. The big desktop revolution (outside
of Apple) was initially driven by IBM, Commodore, Tandy, and Atari...all
relatively established businesses partnering with younger firms for software
or whatnot.

Sure, we had Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, but at the end of the day
it seems like they're all gone and blown away while the more lasting impacts
remain attributed to academia (.edu and .gov again), defense (.mil), or
consumer software not really driven by venture capital.

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locusm
I guess this is cool if your into ugly concrete construction, check out rammed
earth to see something beautiful.
[http://www.rammedearthconstructions.com.au/gallery.php?mp_id...](http://www.rammedearthconstructions.com.au/gallery.php?mp_id=11)

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VLM
Its interesting to see the world of "just like plastic filament printing but
with concrete" collide with the world of highly automated manufactured
housing. Bring the jobsite to the printer or the printer to the jobsite,
sorta.

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bayesianhorse
Obviously this technology isn't ready for prime-time yet. But there is no
compelling reason why it shouldn't be able to compete with prefabbed housing.
In any way, this 3D-printer collaborates with prefabbed parts, so you can
combine custom or tricky bits with prefabbed parts for the easier portions.

Where I see additional advantages is complicated buildings, for example pig
stables where you want hundreds of bays, and maybe special channels for
herding pigs etc.

Also for larger settlements once the robot is on-site it can just keep on
going while the logistics train is a lot simpler than if they had to
coordinate all the different types of parts.

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aaron695
You'll notice a whole lot of hand waving around auxiliary issues like wiring
and painting. Solvable yes, but projects in their own right.

Biggest point he makes is around the danger. It's also why autonomous cars
might take off incredibly quick. Once the lawsuits start rolling in by people
hurt/killed by people driving cars large companies will have to go autonomous
pretty quick.

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650REDHAIR
I love this idea, but where would this be useful?

Is there really a shortage of single family homes anywhere? Maybe in some sort
of disaster area or 3rd world, but I imagine there are better/easier/cheaper
alternatives for those situations.

~~~
yetanotherphd
The aim is to make them cheaper, and with less injury to workers

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mattsfrey
As cool as this is, it's scary to think where our economy is going. What will
all the construction workers do?

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Fundlab
I love the way nascent thought is being given to the use of 3D printing on
large size implementations

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ffrryuu
And the house will still cost $1 million.

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tehwalrus
This is wicked. I want one. :)

