The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
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Re: The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
#2As a 3d printer enthusiast, I think this is really cool. But as someone who built an ADU a few years ago, I fail to see how this will address affordability in any meaningful way.
Building a structure is a lot more than framing. For our project, the framers were on site a few weeks out of the six-month total.
I think modular pre-fab building is a much more effective strategy for this segment of the market. Perhaps 3d printing techniques can increase productivity there, but I'm not quite show how.
Re: The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
#3> “People can’t find homes, they’re very expensive. We also have an aging population … so there’s less and less people who are electricians, plumbers, or builders,” Habib Dagher, the executive director of the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC), told CNN via video call.
Presumably this thing doesn't print pipes or electrical wires, so it seems like there's still a need to address those issues.
Re: The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
#4As a 3d printer enthusiast, I think this is really cool. But as someone who built an ADU a few years ago, I fail to see how this will address affordability in any meaningful way. Building a structure is a lot more than framing. For our project, the framers were on site a few weeks out of the six-month total. I think modular pre-fab building is a much more effective strategy for this segment of the market. Perhaps 3d…
Agreed; we looked into building one, and the actual construction wouldn't have been the problem - getting permits, paying to have surveys done, and drawing up architectural drawings and such would have already been pretty expensive - and that's the bare minimum required to even get an answer from our city as to whether we can plop one down.
Re: The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
#5[deleted]
Re: The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
#6What I love about modern housing is that it's built out of modular parts that I can buy from the hardware store and fix myself. 3d prints are notoriously unrepairable; if there's an earthquake will houses like this fracture in a way that the entire thing is scrap?
Re: The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
#7As a 3d printer enthusiast, I think this is really cool. But as someone who built an ADU a few years ago, I fail to see how this will address affordability in any meaningful way. Building a structure is a lot more than framing. For our project, the framers were on site a few weeks out of the six-month total. I think modular pre-fab building is a much more effective strategy for this segment of the market. Perhaps 3d…
ADU: Accessory Dwelling Unit
Re: The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
#83D printed houses are cool, but I wonder if the future would actually be in robots doing the heavy labor of regular balloon framing instead. Given a standard set of pre-fab frames and parameterized layouts that only use standard sizes, a small team of robots could probably put up a frame pretty fast. Two robots to place a piece, and one to nail it in place.
Re: The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
#9Maybe it's just the fact that I don't know anything about material science, but I am not sure I'd feel safe in a wood+resin house; this just seems like it's going to end up as extruded particleboard, which I wouldn't even consider building a house out of it.
Honestly, maybe they're getting better, but when I researched 3D printed houses about a year ago I was a little disappointed to see how little the 3d printing actually bought you. It still seemed like an awful lot of human labor was involved in the process, to a point where I'm actually not sure that the 3D printing actually saved time or money. There's a lot more to a house than the walls, but the 3D printer can't really help with anything but walls.
Re: The world's largest 3D printer is building cozy homes from wood
#10Definitely a lot of unanswered questions for me, feels a bit like a feel good piece honestly.