The man who prints houses | Hacker News Reader

The man who prints houses

3dprinter.net

55 pointsrberger16 comments

While it's quite interesting that someone has made a 3d printer this big. You can't literally print a house with one of these. Just think about a typical wall build up, it will be something like this: dry lining, vapour control layer, insulation, air gap, <magic printed sandstone structure>, waterproofing and or rain screen. The basics you need are to be able to print a structure which is waterproof, has a U-Value of 0.2 w/mk, is fire resistant and has some tensile strength. The material in the OP is 'like sandstone' which is structurally useful only in compression. So you couldn't print a skyscraper or Frank Lloyd Wright's 'falling water'. If they could print fibre reinforced concrete then it wouldn't be so limiting.

Also, bear in mind that the 'shell and core'; the structure, cladding and primary circulation is generally less than half the cost of the finished building. E.g. all the HVAC still has to be installed by hand. Innovation in construction is notoriously slow moving; even quite simple innovations can take 50 years to be widely adopted. It's also incredibly heavily regulated in most countries. I think that modular construction is more interesting avenue to explore. Most buildings are the equivalent of 'spaghetti code' there is lots of progress that can be made by modularising parts and standardising interfaces. Architects like Bucknister Fuller, Otto Frei, and others did lots of interesting work in the 1950's on modularisation but the concept hasn't developed much since then.

It seems that insulation etc should be printable too. Spray insulation has been on the market for years, and that should be relatively easily adaptable to printing. I don't see why ductwork shouldn't also be printable, and maybe even plumbing too (there are already PVC printers on the market). There are also designs like the Earthship that supposedly get by on passive heating and cooling and don't require HVAC.

Certainly Dini's machine won't do all of this, but the approach is promising.

The main problem is he can't add rebar so it's going to be a lot weaker structure than you could build with a mold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebar

It's also going to be slow and costly, but for art that's less important.

Those are all valid concerns, but (and I don't mean this negatively), they seem to be more "first world" problems. For the majority of the people on this planet (c.f., Haiti), a sturdy box with a roof itself will be a huge step up.

Imagine an army of robots just toiling away, building a structure per day. The locals provide sand, and a barrel of ink, and out comes a house. Their very own house, sturdy enough to survive a hurricane or flooding.

Yes, this isn't perfect, but nothing is at first. Things approach perfection after several iterations.

That's the most inspiring thing I've seen in quite a while. I wish we could see it running. I'm sure we'll eventually look back and chuckle at the equipment he had to start with, but it really sounds like in Dini we're looking at the next Gutenberg.

I think pre-fab houses were the "Gutenberg", and this is more like desktop publishing.

Relevant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=172Wne1t_2Q

All in all this is an awesome idea, and its brilliant to see it actually getting implemented. It's not perfect, but few things are at first.

I love the idea of printing houses, for cheaper and faster construction. It could also mean that less waste is produced, less trees are involved, the whole process could be greener than what it currently is.

I realise that the idea of printing 3D objects on a large industrial scale is nothing new, but I am still looking forward to seeing the documentary because without people that are pushing the state of the art further we wouldn't be where we are today.

Man, the future is gonna be weird.

Have you guys seen this Food Printing?

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/24/technology/3D_food_printer/i...

Can you say 'replicator'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)

As long as it's not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_%28Stargate%29 :)

When he speaks Italian he swears at one of the workers.

Yup, he shouts 'cazzo', which translates to something like 'you dick!'

I always imagine that future construction of houses will be less like a giant 3d printer larger than the house laying it down, and more like a bunch of smaller specialised robots building up a structure like ants build a mound or spiders build a web.

This is very cool, does anyone know what the binder is?

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