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A Printer That Can Print a 2,500 Square Foot House in 20 Hours
- Fundlab 13y agoI love the way nascent thought is being given to the use of 3D printing on large size implementations
- ohwp 13y agoThe 3d visuals of this printer have been on the internet for more than a year but there are still no pictures and movies of a working version. Concrete printing is not new so I wonder what is keeping them from building the printer over a year later.
- oilytheotter 13y agoDid you see the video and pictures of the printer in the video? It wasn't full scale, but it wasn't far off either.
- ohwp 13y agoYes I've seen the video's (a year ago). That's why I wonder why they didn't built a house already. They have the knowledge and tech. Some speculation: maybe it's very hard to print concrete out in the open with all kinds of weather messing up the print. Or companies just don't believe in the benefits so investors are hard to find.
- jared314 13y agoI remember reading that D-Shape[1] had clogging problems with their printer. Perhaps CC has the same issue. [1] http://www.d-shape.com/tecnologia.htm http://www.d-shape.com/tecnologia.htm
- moocowduckquack 13y agoHere's CC's 2007 video of the scale prototype robot working - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOlRI_Hm1Po http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOlRI_Hm1Po
- VLM 13y agoIts interesting to see the world of "just like plastic filament printing but with concrete" collide with the world of highly automated manufactured housing. Bring the jobsite to the printer or the printer to the jobsite, sorta.
- angersock 13y agoSo, I realize that the return on investment for VCs in something like this is probably pretty low--the AEC industry is terrible (though real estate is alright). That said, can we at least be honest that having that much capital locked up in stupid consumer and enterprise gambles is actually a pretty obviously sub-optimal use of that money for the common good?
- hnriot 13y ago"sub-optimal use of that money for the common good?" -- isn't that how communism started?
- angersock 13y agoHey, I didn't claim that it was morally repugnant, that the folks should be cast out in streets to live with the other homeless in SF and have their Teslas and iJiggers auctioned off to feed the poor. I just would appreciate some acknowledgement that, "Yeah, we don't fund things like this that could help the average person because it doesn't give us money." It's the same thing behind making money off of war, off of cancer, or off of scarcity in general--I don't ask that you admit that you're evil (if that exists in your belief system), but merely that you are profiting off of human misery and suffering.
- mh- 13y agowhy don't you, personally, fund the things you want to see funded?
- angersock 13y agoAh, but I do, by offering up my time and sometimes money.
- ameister14 13y agoSo...facebook for dogs contributes to human misery and suffering?
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- JonSkeptic 13y ago"Construction is the most hazardous job. It is more dangerous than mining and agriculture." Interesting if true. I had no idea.
- angersock 13y agoYep. Even for just houses: consider framing, or doing roof work--walking around on joists is not really safe.
- jlgreco 13y agoIs it more dangerous in terms of injuries, or in terms of deaths? I would expect injuries to be very frequent, but frequent deaths would surprise me.
- VLM 13y agoFirst google result I found was in the .uk they're 5% of workers and almost 25% of worker deaths. So yeah pretty bad.
- DanBC 13y agoHere's the website for the UK Health and Safety Executive. http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/industry/index.htm http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/industry/index.htm There are not so many people mining, and there are ridiculously strict regulations around mining. (I used to build, inspect, test 'chock interface units' which can be thought of as 'active walking pit props'. A cutting head removes a long stretch of coal, which falls onto a conveyor. That new section needs to be pit-propped, so this first line walks forward with the cutting head.) Farming has many accidents - busy people, lots of opportunity for accident. Also a high rate of suicide. (Again, access to means and methods. Farmers are one of the small number of people allowed to own guns in the UK.) It would be interesting to see the number of deaths per 1,000 workers for each sector, to try and get a better comparison.
- jguimont 13y agoWonder how building's made like this can withstand the cold. In Canada or northern US we do not construct houses and building the same way that southern countries do. For example, exterior walls are 1' wide with an R value of close to 30, most houses have a basement that is below the freezing line, etc.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bnolsen 13y agoFoundation work won't change. You'll have to have digging equipment and lay concrete/masonry blocks for the base so this equipment can be used to print the rest of the house. The fun part of course will be how easy it is to position one of these house printers where you have a 7+% grade. Another thing too. How does one recover if the printer screws up or worse yet the program loaded is the wrong one or somehow corrupted? That could generate a whole house's worth of concrete waste.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoHm. A whole house, except the flooring, walls, wiring, plumbing, windows, roofing, lighting, heck anything but the bare frame and walls. You can already do that, prefab, in a few hours. This is custom, but so is prefab. The problem is the usual: a single material isn't enough to make anything but the simple constructs. Almost everything is complex these days. Materials Science hasn't been a science for a century for nothing.
- oilytheotter 13y agoIn the video, he proposes that the printer would have a second pick and place type arm that would be able to install plumbing and electrical systems. He claims that it could be used to do finishing work too, but there are no animations to suggest how that might work.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoSo, wave a wand and say "a robot will do it". That doesn't count as "A printer that can print a 2500 sq ft house". Even imagine the robot exists: how exactly does it just 'plug in' the plumbinb and electrical systems? Currently it takes a person to scramble all over the house, drilling and fitting and connecting. There is nothing being solved here. Just a blue-sky story about an imaginary printer.
- fudged71 13y agoI can imagine someone saying something similar in the early days of the computer. Could you watch the video? He already addresses these issues, and they are clearly researching how to do this. This is just a giant pick-and-place machine working with larger components. They already show that some human effort will be required in the assembly process, but hopefully will be much safer than what is done today.
- diydsp 13y agoI am glad to see your justified skepticism of 3-d printer mania. The real breakthroughs will come when people stop fixating on "printing" (extrusion) and realize it's the 3-d (4-d, 5-d, etc.) gantry that's the super-useful part. Fitted with different tools, such as painting, gluing and sanding tools, a 3-d gantry can be extremely useful. There will however continue to be a "last mile" problem in Computer-Assisted Manufacturing (CAM) applications. These are the details, such as stripping wires, screwing in electrical boxes, etc. where the robot to perform these tasks is prohibitively expensive. The breakthrough is the 3-d gantry form, due largely to the reduction in prices of microcontrollers and power transistors, but it does not extend to all robotics, such as detail work. For example, I've been watching videos on building guitars. I would love to see a 3-d printer friend explain to me how it's going to build a guitar from scratch. The economy of 3-d printing doesn't extend to the large number of distinct tasks, requiring different tools, techniques, process and forces in most objects that are useful in the real world. This entropic mixture of difficult processes, I would argue, is the very reason WHY particular artifacts, such as a guitar, television set, couch, etc. are valuable in the first place. It is because no quantity of single, unskilled process (like shoveling coal) can produce them.
- brokentone 13y agoInteresting, but this still has the classic issue where the "printer has to be larger than the object printed." A few weeks back I got a tour of MIT's media lab, where they have a robot arm they're strapping to a bucket truck, in which case they have a mobile, 3D printer with a 100 foot wingspan. This arm has an attachment for a polyurethane foam sprayer, a milling device, and a paint sprayer. In which case they can spray out a concrete form, mill it to get more precise (urethane foam is a bit imprecise), and paint it. Then they want to get a series of these trucks to work together in a "hive" format... crazy kids.
- DanBC 13y ago> Then they want to get a series of these trucks to work together in a "hive" format... crazy kids. The crazy bit is sending that hive to Mars to build accommodation units for settlers.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoSigh, if this guy had an actual 3D printer he would realize those doors and windows are a no-go :-) More seriously, there are unsolved issues in printing unsupported structures, the current best solution is a second 'support' material that can be dissolved/blown away once the part is completed but that rules out voids which are part of what you hope to make with this sort of thing. Also as others point out this is just the frame (and if you do the robotic crane thing you can add a roof. You might also be able to use your robotic crane to do joists for overhangs but the finish suffers as your joist material is exposed on the underside. No doubt solvable problems but they take away from some of the 'magicalness' of fused deposition printing. Stereo lithography where the part is neutrally bouyant in the construction fluid doesn't have those issues but it has other issues associated with strength and material choices that can be laser activated. For now doing a concrete lay-up would be pretty killer but building the forms on site isn't that hard and in both cases you need to transport the concrete at the last minute. Bottom line I think the stuff that BluHomes [1] is doing is much more creative than trying to do this with 3D printing. [1] http://www.bluhomes.com/ http://www.bluhomes.com/
- venomsnake 13y agoThis is TED. The majority of stuff presented there requires antimatter spherical cows in vacuum to work. At best.
- eco 13y agoTEDx, at least. TED itself is usually (but not always) fairly well vetted. TEDx on the other hand is almost anything goes. "The event featured talks on crystal therapy and Egyptian psychoaromatherapy and, according to the schedule, closed with the chanting of mantras and songs for Gaia." http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/10/3751786/ted-pseudoscience-valencia-carlzimmer-tedx http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/10/3751786/ted-pseudoscience...
- moocowduckquack 13y agoif this guy had an actual 3D printer he would realize those doors and windows are a no-go Is easily solvable though by having the robot drop a plank across the gap before printing the lintel, so I don't think that is a showstopper.
- 650REDHAIR 13y agoI love this idea, but where would this be useful? Is there really a shortage of single family homes anywhere? Maybe in some sort of disaster area or 3rd world, but I imagine there are better/easier/cheaper alternatives for those situations.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoThe aim is to make them cheaper, and with less injury to workers
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoI wrote a bit about this and it's implications some years back - http://www.ciocookbook.com/philosophy/thecodeisthedesign.html http://www.ciocookbook.com/philosophy/thecodeisthedesign.htm..., and the Times has reported on a group working on concrete printing - but as is pointed out here, it's very hard - but on e the basics are in, well software eats another industry
- ffrryuu 13y agoAnd the house will still cost $1 million.
- bayesianhorse 13y agoObviously this technology isn't ready for prime-time yet. But there is no compelling reason why it shouldn't be able to compete with prefabbed housing. In any way, this 3D-printer collaborates with prefabbed parts, so you can combine custom or tricky bits with prefabbed parts for the easier portions. Where I see additional advantages is complicated buildings, for example pig stables where you want hundreds of bays, and maybe special channels for herding pigs etc. Also for larger settlements once the robot is on-site it can just keep on going while the logistics train is a lot simpler than if they had to coordinate all the different types of parts.
- VladRussian2 13y agonow if there were a printer that could print a 5000 sq feet lot for the house, with all the building permits approved, kickbacks/bribes/political donations paid and utilities connected... The 3D printed houses will be a life-saver on Moon and Mars though.
- prawn 13y agoOr for regional/rural areas, building stalls for animals or shelters or even simple holiday houses. Or emergency or refugee accommodation.
- aaron695 13y agoYou'll notice a whole lot of hand waving around auxiliary issues like wiring and painting. Solvable yes, but projects in their own right. Biggest point he makes is around the danger. It's also why autonomous cars might take off incredibly quick. Once the lawsuits start rolling in by people hurt/killed by people driving cars large companies will have to go autonomous pretty quick.
- locusm 13y agoI guess this is cool if your into ugly concrete construction, check out rammed earth to see something beautiful. http://www.rammedearthconstructions.com.au/gallery.php?mp_id=11 http://www.rammedearthconstructions.com.au/gallery.php?mp_id...
- marincounty 13y agoAs the owner of a physibles domain name, and hopefully one day a company; fanciful stories like this are a bit too soon. Actually, I hope we never have to resort to living in manufactured houses. The overly strict building codes and approval processes in the U.S. might bring this kind of building a reality though. Right now, I think we need to work on ending homelessness. Yes, build pyramids in the middle of the country where land is still cheap. Nothing fancy, but livable. Kinda like kibbutzes, but on a much larger scale.
- mattsfrey 13y agoAs cool as this is, it's scary to think where our economy is going. What will all the construction workers do?
- tehwalrus 13y agoThis is wicked. I want one. :)