3 ms·

https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/tecla-house-mario-cucinella-wasp-architecture-270421 https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/tecla-house-mario-cucinella... is what I

https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/tecla-house-mario-cucinella-wasp-architecture-270421 https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/tecla-house-mario-cucinella... is what I remember reading. The press release site is here: https://www.3dwasp.com/en/3d-printed-house-tecla/ https://www.3dwasp.com/en/3d-printed-house-tecla/ The printer arrangement is quite interesting in its own right, they put gantries up in a sort of hexagonal grid: https://www.3dwasp.com/stampante-3d-per-case-crane-wasp/ https://www.3dwasp.com/stampante-3d-per-case-crane-wasp/ From the banner picture on that page you can see part of the mixing kit: it looks like they basically mash local soil and a bit of water (with the option of adding hay, according to https://www.3dwasp.com/en/maker-economy-starter-kit/ https://www.3dwasp.com/en/maker-economy-starter-kit/) to make a bulk mixture which is just pumped through a hose on a fairly conventional cantilevered arm. The benefit is intended to be that you don't transport the construction materials at all - Km0, they call it - but you'd have to do some digging to find out how the physical properties compare to other techniques.

regularfry 5y ago
One major downside I can see of this sort of construction compared to almost anything else is that if anything gets damaged, I can see it being a right pain to fix.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Why so? Clay-hay is really solid, and if you ever make a hole, making a patch is as simple as making more of the mixture and applying it locally.
  - regularfry 5y ago
    It's more that the designs you're likely to be building to take advantage of the fancy extruder are more likely to be the sort of thin-shell construction where holes anywhere cause structural issues that you wouldn't see with more discrete building elements. I was also thinking that if you've only got a hole in one face of a wall, you can't get to the back of the hole to support a patch, but I'm guessing that's less of a problem.
southerntofu 5y ago
thanks for the link, that's pretty cool indeed! however running 6KW to produce a small house is not exactly eco-friendly either, especially given that the machine's production has not been accounted for. from my experience, to produce clay-hay housing, 200h with a bunch of volunteers will get you so far as this machine, although building so high is trickier in a low-tech setting don't get me wrong: i'd much rather have this kind of house production than concrete bullshit that pollutes orders of magnitude more. i'm just saying if we're going down this way we may as well do it "by hand" :)
- regularfry 5y ago
  Depends where the power's coming from, I guess. They do acknowledge that the generator is a weak point in the kit.

regularfry 5y ago

One major downside I can see of this sort of construction compared to almost anything else is that if anything gets damaged, I can see it being a right pain to fix.

southerntofu 5y ago
Why so? Clay-hay is really solid, and if you ever make a hole, making a patch is as simple as making more of the mixture and applying it locally.
- regularfry 5y ago
  It's more that the designs you're likely to be building to take advantage of the fancy extruder are more likely to be the sort of thin-shell construction where holes anywhere cause structural issues that you wouldn't see with more discrete building elements. I was also thinking that if you've only got a hole in one face of a wall, you can't get to the back of the hole to support a patch, but I'm guessing that's less of a problem.

southerntofu 5y ago

thanks for the link, that's pretty cool indeed! however running 6KW to produce a small house is not exactly eco-friendly either, especially given that the machine's production has not been accounted for. from my experience, to produce clay-hay housing, 200h with a bunch of volunteers will get you so far as this machine, although building so high is trickier in a low-tech setting don't get me wrong: i'd much rather have this kind of house production than concrete bullshit that pollutes orders of magnitude more. i'm just saying if we're going down this way we may as well do it "by hand" :)

regularfry 5y ago
Depends where the power's coming from, I guess. They do acknowledge that the generator is a weak point in the kit.