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3D Printer Built 10 Homes in 24 Hours

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Re: 3D Printer Built 10 Homes in 24 Hours

#3
This is cool, it does seem unfortunate that Behrokh Khoshnevis and the University of Southern California haven't gone and done this already given how long they have been developing contour crafting, moon bases are great and all, but cheap housing is immediately practical and in dire need in California.

Re: 3D Printer Built 10 Homes in 24 Hours

#4
Not sure why this is currently front page. They could have built even better houses had they used what is referred to around here as 'tilt-up' construction. You pour a concrete foundation, You stake out four wall forms around that foundation and pour in the walls, when they cure you tilt them up and tie the tops together with steel. Boom, "instant" building with windows and doors.

Re: 3D Printer Built 10 Homes in 24 Hours

#5
This design actually seems pretty interesting - one of the advantages of additive manufacturing by printing is that the resultant parts can be made with a strong internal structure (triangles, honeycombs, etc.) while still being made of mostly air, an outcome that's difficult to achieve using molding/casting, forging, or subtractive manufacturing (milling).

I also suspect that the mostly-hollow walls have a decent R-value on their own.

I do wonder how this competes with straw bale / rammed earth, shipping containers, and other recycled, rapid prefab building manufacturing.

"Making cheap houses for the poor" seems to be a common design+architecture firm/student theme - does anyone know of any success/failure stories where these "cheap house" designs were applied in real life?

Re: 3D Printer Built 10 Homes in 24 Hours

#6
post #4

Not sure why this is currently front page. They could have built even better houses had they used what is referred to around here as 'tilt-up' construction. You pour a concrete foundation, You stake out four wall forms around that foundation and pour in the walls, when they cure you tilt them up and tie the tops together with steel. Boom, "instant" building with windows and doors.

[deleted]

Re: 3D Printer Built 10 Homes in 24 Hours

#8
post #5

This design actually seems pretty interesting - one of the advantages of additive manufacturing by printing is that the resultant parts can be made with a strong internal structure (triangles, honeycombs, etc.) while still being made of mostly air, an outcome that's difficult to achieve using molding/casting, forging, or subtractive manufacturing (milling). I also suspect that the mostly-hollow walls have a decent R-…

Monolithic Domes did such a project in India. I have no idea how successful it turned out to be in the end.

Re: 3D Printer Built 10 Homes in 24 Hours

#9
post #4

Not sure why this is currently front page. They could have built even better houses had they used what is referred to around here as 'tilt-up' construction. You pour a concrete foundation, You stake out four wall forms around that foundation and pour in the walls, when they cure you tilt them up and tie the tops together with steel. Boom, "instant" building with windows and doors.

The approach is somewhat novel and interesting, and it's the first time I've seen photos of an actual end-to-end implementation of the "3D print a house!!" trope. I do agree that it's probably impractical, but I found the approach fun to think about.

I also think this has a few advantages over tilt-up:

1) The resulting product is lighter, since the walls are mostly air rather than concrete. I suspect they could manufacture small houses at a factory and transport them by truck, without the construction overhead of other prefabricated home systems.

2) The end product probably insulates better. With the right internal design to try to limit air movement (and thus natural convective losses), these walls look like they could have a decent R-value.

3) Less space is required to print in-place or construct a manufacturing facility. Tilt-up requires enough space to pour the wall forms around the building in addition to room to utilize cranes and cherry pickers - an in-place gantry system for printing a house should only take (house+gantry) footprint rather than (house + height of house).

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