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I love 3D printing. I have seven 3D printers and have designed a bunch of 3D printed robots. But there is too much unreasonable buzz around 3D printed homes. T

I love 3D printing. I have seven 3D printers and have designed a bunch of 3D printed robots. But there is too much unreasonable buzz around 3D printed homes. Too many news stories act like this machine will somehow solve homelessness or some other breathless claim. My contractor friend told me framing a house is cheap. It’s all the finishing work that makes a home expensive, and 3D printed homes still need that. Meanwhile I saw a 3 story apartment building that went up in Berkeley in two days because it was made of modules from China. It seems like homes made in a factory make way more sense than 3D printed ones. Edit: I don’t want to be too negative. I can’t read the article due to paywall and I don’t know a lot about the technology. Certainly some reporting on this tech is absurd but the concept may have merit in time.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
> Too many news stories act like this machine will somehow solve homelessness or some other breathless claim. Could make blue-collar workers in the construction industry homeless when they lose their jobs. Some manual-labor jobs we should want to keep.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Ahh, but that’s an allocation problem. The goal should be people are housed regardless of the consistency of their work and income. Like others in this thread have mentioned, the problem isn’t 3D printing versus factory fab, it’s the economic model on top of the physical system.
michaelt 5y ago
Not to mention the cost of land anywhere near good jobs. In my country, if a 3-bedroom family home in a given town is worth X, and constructing such a home costs Y, the plot of land will cost X-Y.
- midasuni 5y ago
  I’d expect it to cost even more, wealth begats wealth. Since Europeans started to define owners of the land 400 years ago the population of the US has ballooned, the land hasn’t. Those whose ancestors acquired land are in a far better position than those who didn’t
  - nverno 5y ago
    Somewhat related, in the US at least, homesteading wasn't ended until 1976 (1986 in Alaska). A rather large percentage of the land was given away by the government after the act was passed in 1862. Of course, the concept of land ownership goes back thousands of years. [[the singer, Jewel, discusses growing up on an Alaskan homestead on a fascinating recent interview with Joe Rogan]]
- Octoth0rpe 5y ago
  > Not to mention the cost of land anywhere near good jobs. It does help that most 'good' (significantly more than living wages) jobs can increasingly be done remotely. I worry more about the cost of land near 'ok' jobs (at/slightly above living wage).
dragonelite 5y ago
Homelessness is a political problem not a production problem. I think it must be 5 years ago that I saw one of those prefab houses going up. I saw a crane being brought in at like 8am in when I had my drive to the office and when I came back home at 5pm there was a 2 story house where the crane stood.
- Octoth0rpe 5y ago
  > Homelessness is a political problem not a production problem. Mostly agree, but certainly a significant drop in the cost of addressing the problem would make it more tractable, politically. That said even if the production problem was addressed, the land cost would exist, and no matter how low the cost is there would certainly be some politicians unwilling to fund it on 'principle' (quotes because I really mean spite)
  - _0w8t 5y ago
    The land cost for housing is mostly political problem.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - Tanjreeve 5y ago
    The land cost and the zoning problems are orders of magnitude more of a problem than actual building. Granted right this second Raw materials are ridiculous but that's a knock on from covid problems.
varjag 5y ago
Basically anything that doesn't need piece-unique mechanical design is better prefabricated than printed.
regularfry 5y ago
Not only that, but prefab on a literal factory production line can do a far more consistent job of what finishing is possible pre-assembly than you can do on-site. Yes, construction workers are good at this stuff, but they're unlikely to compete with TPS-style production line optimisation on cost or repeatability. You can't even use rapid fabrication to set the plant up at the point of need, because wastage in the construction process means that it takes less energy to ship the finished product than the component parts you'd need in your supply lines.
chrisaiv 5y ago
http://archive.today/BxdfB http://archive.today/BxdfB
_0w8t 5y ago
The main problem with prefab is transportation costs. It is not surprising that the homes were setup in Berkeley, which is near a port, since sending goods by sea is like 50-100 times cheaper per distance traveled than by roads. Plus sea travel cost comes mostly from weight, not size, so transporting bulky items with mostly air by volume is ok. But for more inland travel transportation cost for pre-built modules becomes very problematic. It is much cheaper to bring dense raw materials. But then of course the issue is high building cost and 3D printing tries to address that.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

> Too many news stories act like this machine will somehow solve homelessness or some other breathless claim. Could make blue-collar workers in the construction industry homeless when they lose their jobs. Some manual-labor jobs we should want to keep.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Ahh, but that’s an allocation problem. The goal should be people are housed regardless of the consistency of their work and income. Like others in this thread have mentioned, the problem isn’t 3D printing versus factory fab, it’s the economic model on top of the physical system.

michaelt 5y ago

Not to mention the cost of land anywhere near good jobs. In my country, if a 3-bedroom family home in a given town is worth X, and constructing such a home costs Y, the plot of land will cost X-Y.

midasuni 5y ago
I’d expect it to cost even more, wealth begats wealth. Since Europeans started to define owners of the land 400 years ago the population of the US has ballooned, the land hasn’t. Those whose ancestors acquired land are in a far better position than those who didn’t
- nverno 5y ago
  Somewhat related, in the US at least, homesteading wasn't ended until 1976 (1986 in Alaska). A rather large percentage of the land was given away by the government after the act was passed in 1862. Of course, the concept of land ownership goes back thousands of years. [[the singer, Jewel, discusses growing up on an Alaskan homestead on a fascinating recent interview with Joe Rogan]]
Octoth0rpe 5y ago
> Not to mention the cost of land anywhere near good jobs. It does help that most 'good' (significantly more than living wages) jobs can increasingly be done remotely. I worry more about the cost of land near 'ok' jobs (at/slightly above living wage).

dragonelite 5y ago

Homelessness is a political problem not a production problem. I think it must be 5 years ago that I saw one of those prefab houses going up. I saw a crane being brought in at like 8am in when I had my drive to the office and when I came back home at 5pm there was a 2 story house where the crane stood.

Octoth0rpe 5y ago
> Homelessness is a political problem not a production problem. Mostly agree, but certainly a significant drop in the cost of addressing the problem would make it more tractable, politically. That said even if the production problem was addressed, the land cost would exist, and no matter how low the cost is there would certainly be some politicians unwilling to fund it on 'principle' (quotes because I really mean spite)
- _0w8t 5y ago
  The land cost for housing is mostly political problem.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Tanjreeve 5y ago
  The land cost and the zoning problems are orders of magnitude more of a problem than actual building. Granted right this second Raw materials are ridiculous but that's a knock on from covid problems.

varjag 5y ago

Basically anything that doesn't need piece-unique mechanical design is better prefabricated than printed.

regularfry 5y ago

Not only that, but prefab on a literal factory production line can do a far more consistent job of what finishing is possible pre-assembly than you can do on-site. Yes, construction workers are good at this stuff, but they're unlikely to compete with TPS-style production line optimisation on cost or repeatability. You can't even use rapid fabrication to set the plant up at the point of need, because wastage in the construction process means that it takes less energy to ship the finished product than the component parts you'd need in your supply lines.

chrisaiv 5y ago

http://archive.today/BxdfB http://archive.today/BxdfB

_0w8t 5y ago

The main problem with prefab is transportation costs. It is not surprising that the homes were setup in Berkeley, which is near a port, since sending goods by sea is like 50-100 times cheaper per distance traveled than by roads. Plus sea travel cost comes mostly from weight, not size, so transporting bulky items with mostly air by volume is ok. But for more inland travel transportation cost for pre-built modules becomes very problematic. It is much cheaper to bring dense raw materials. But then of course the issue is high building cost and 3D printing tries to address that.