3D Printed Houses Might be Closer Than You Thought

I worked for Pulte shortly after they purchased the South Florida homebuilder Divosta. A 3d printer needs to overcome many of the same hurdles Divosta encountered. Among these is that the pace of construction is determined by capital investment in equipment and so seasonal and cyclical variations in demand cannot be accommodated efficiently by scaling capacity up or down quickly relative to conventional construction.

Furthermore, the article takes a naive view of a construction schedule:

"It would build the house in such a way that you’d only need to put the windows and the doors in the cutouts that have been left by the huge construction robot."

If there are no windows or doors, a building isn't dried in. That means that domestic equipment and finishes (e.g. Kitchen appliances, gypsum celings, most types of flooring, and trim) are not yet installed. And the process of finishing a building takes more than half the time.

Now, one might argue that the system is intended for places requiring basic shelter such as poverty stricken areas of the developing world (thereby avoiding finishes) All I can say is that the history of high tech construction systems in such places does not lead me to be optimistic. Lack of infrastructure and cheap labor tend to create market conditions favoring other approaches.

Manufactured housing was an ongoing project throughout the last century, and an optimized solution was found. Unfortunately, it is the drop dead unsexy house trailer.

[Edit] After watching the video, it is clear that the system requires a specialized concrete mix - one with very low slump in order that a freshly deposited layer does not just flow off the top of previously deposited layers.

This makes conventional delivery via truck from batch plant more difficult. Low slump mixes tend to have proportionally shorter working times making traffic delays or delays on the construction site lead to higher waste by the mixer truck load. In addition specialized mixes require additional coordination by the batch plant.

In addition, the environmental impact of concrete is high in terms of greenhouse gas emissions compared to wood or steel.

3D printed houses are still going to need some conventional building work -- they need stable foundations, just like any other building, which means some excavation and levelling, and piles in unstable or waterlogged ground. They need utility ducting and pipes laying, they need wiring and pipes installing after construction, and so on. They probably also need cavity wall insulation blowing in. Not to mention windows, doors, and so on. Finally, I notice that this looks to be printing in unreinforced concrete. What about some rebar for the load-bearing elements?

Yes, it's a neat idea and it may save a lot of bricklaying work -- but it's not going to automate house construction 100%: not even close.

Much more interesting to think about is what you can do that exploits the properties of this. The two big ones seems to be insane speed and curved surfaces. Could this be used to rapidly build bunkers or bridges in a war? How about rome style aquaducts to channel water from a flood or even to simply build dikes in an emergency? Maybe the speed would maybe make previous expensive projects cheap such as massive water irrigation projects. Could printing curved surfaces let you print temporary dam's?

Edit: or how about printing your very own pyramid or a road?

http://www.rsh-p.com/render.aspx?siteID=1&navIDs=1,6,12,... If you exclude the plumbing, electrics and foundations, houses can already easily be built in a day.

NY Times has a good article on this. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/garden/robots-that-build-b...

Could this work in space or on other planets. I'd imagine this is the kind of tech that the military and NASA would be all over! If you could neatly pack the contents of your moon base and ship it ahead by a day.

Or even the military leave this just off the coast of some less than favourable country.

Great for setting up observation and living areas in hostile environments

Sealab anyone?

Edited: stupid iOS autocorrect

Few steps closer to nanolathing :).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanolathe

Interesting stuff to think about but very poorly written and light on content and analysis.

When I hear the words 3D printing, it still sounds like something from a Sci-Fi movie.