64 ms·

>By the way, imo one of the hallmarks of impractical technology is stagnation, dude did it a decade ago, and 3d printed structures have the same problems today.

by serf 3y ago

>By the way, imo one of the hallmarks of impractical technology is stagnation, dude did it a decade ago, and 3d printed structures have the same problems today. no, they don't have the same problems today. Building houses on planar lines with concrete extrusion doesn't represent the cutting edge, it represents the technology that has been vetted and approved enough for public ownership and land endorsement. multi-axis extruders with large DoF and non-planar routing is approaching the state of the art, and overhangs are well dealt with. 3d printing in general is one of the least stagnant industries I can think of right now. It's being adopted en masse by the largest groups and is generally receiving a lot of intellectual attention.

torginus 3y ago
I'm sorry, I raised a bunch of technical concerns, and you hand waved them away with the vague notion that technological progress has solved them. I still don't see how you can build tensioned reinforced concrete structures with this tech, and overhang bridging is not possible due to fundamentally different material properties than say, PLA. To be clear I'm not saying the technology doesn't work, just that it's not better than anything we have now, because of the problems I outlined, and thus is relegated to niches.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Your technical concerns clearly aren't showstoppers because the professional building exists now, and because random person did it DIY a decade ago. There's one overhang solution in my previous link, the more recent videos about printed houses with windows use a different, traditional, solution: lintels. As for reinforcement, I can't say I really deeply understand the Wikipedia page "Reinforcement in concrete 3D printing", but it is quite sizeable and lists many things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_in_concrete_3D_printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_in_concrete_3D_p... To be clear, I also think 3D printed concrete is a case of throwing buzzwords at problems rather than a good idea, but not because it doesn't work, rather because it produces a merely OK result for what is the single cheapest part of the construction process — I can get a prefab shell of a house built here in Germany for €100k, but that turns into €550k when you add the land, preparation of the land, connecting utilities, wiring and plumbing, and interior plastering.
  - torginus 3y ago
    I think we are in agreement, that 3D printed buildings are feasible but impractical. I never claimed that it was impossible, but that there are fundamental differences which makes squirting out thermoplastic out of a small nozzle quite convenient, and concrete out of a huge one, quite problematic. The thing you wrote about lintels, and some of the stuff I've seen about reinforcement with rebars on the link you provided, which all need to be done manually make the process labor intensive, the issue 3D printed building were designed to solve in the first place. I'm honestly puzzled by some of the techniques, where one guy is spraying shotcrete at a rebar structure - what is being 3D printed at this point? And the resulting building will be a concrete house - not necessarily the most environmentally conscious, beautiful, energy efficient, best insulating material.

by serf 3y ago

torginus 3y ago

I'm sorry, I raised a bunch of technical concerns, and you hand waved them away with the vague notion that technological progress has solved them. I still don't see how you can build tensioned reinforced concrete structures with this tech, and overhang bridging is not possible due to fundamentally different material properties than say, PLA. To be clear I'm not saying the technology doesn't work, just that it's not better than anything we have now, because of the problems I outlined, and thus is relegated to niches.

ben_w 3y ago
Your technical concerns clearly aren't showstoppers because the professional building exists now, and because random person did it DIY a decade ago. There's one overhang solution in my previous link, the more recent videos about printed houses with windows use a different, traditional, solution: lintels. As for reinforcement, I can't say I really deeply understand the Wikipedia page "Reinforcement in concrete 3D printing", but it is quite sizeable and lists many things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_in_concrete_3D_printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_in_concrete_3D_p... To be clear, I also think 3D printed concrete is a case of throwing buzzwords at problems rather than a good idea, but not because it doesn't work, rather because it produces a merely OK result for what is the single cheapest part of the construction process — I can get a prefab shell of a house built here in Germany for €100k, but that turns into €550k when you add the land, preparation of the land, connecting utilities, wiring and plumbing, and interior plastering.
- torginus 3y ago
  I think we are in agreement, that 3D printed buildings are feasible but impractical. I never claimed that it was impossible, but that there are fundamental differences which makes squirting out thermoplastic out of a small nozzle quite convenient, and concrete out of a huge one, quite problematic. The thing you wrote about lintels, and some of the stuff I've seen about reinforcement with rebars on the link you provided, which all need to be done manually make the process labor intensive, the issue 3D printed building were designed to solve in the first place. I'm honestly puzzled by some of the techniques, where one guy is spraying shotcrete at a rebar structure - what is being 3D printed at this point? And the resulting building will be a concrete house - not necessarily the most environmentally conscious, beautiful, energy efficient, best insulating material.