Live data from Hacker News

3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

yahoo.com

111–120 of 121 posts

Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

#111
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It’s a gimmick" Early attempts always look gimmicki. Putting a camera in a phone, crazy, who needs it, just a gimmick. I use my phone to dial numbers and make calls. This looks like it has a lot of room to grow and adapt. Materials change. Just look at how 3d printers have changed in 10 years.

Survivor bias helps a lot here. For every thing that sticks you have thousands of absolute flops that we all forget very quickly

That is true.

When I look at 3d printing advancements, I have hard time not thinking that with scaled up to houses, they wont have similar advancements, with time and resources.

Kind of like Steam Engines. After the Steam Engine was invented, it took many decades to dial it in to the large 'more' efficient models we are familiar with. It seems like large 3d printing will take a similar time period to grow to industrial levels.

Even the Iphone, wasn't that great at the beginning.

Maybe my overall point. They have made an entire neighborhood with a 3d printer. That seems to be now over the hump of proof of concept, and now there can be steady improvements.

Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

#112
post #95

Seems pointless and expensive, and it's concrete that doesn't lend itself to modification or repair. 3D printing in this case appears to be used as a tech gimmick rather than an actually-scalable process, or it would already be in-use everywhere. The most inherently sensible home would be protected from wind (derecho, hurricane, and the uncommon tornado), fire, flooding, and severe heat and cold (and associated clima…

I have toured the Icon houses at Wolf Ranch. I went through their show house, but I also went to some of the houses under construction and examined them and talked to the workers a bit. You couldn't approach them them while the printer was running -- note also, they have a next-gen printer that looks more like a cement pumper crane arm, these were the previous ones. Anyway the modification of them is addressed in som…

I grew-up in a stucco-clad (like concrete, about 3/4" or 20 mm thick) tract home in California. Replacing a termite-damaged sill joist was insanely laborious just cutting through a little bit of stucco. Now imagine a building that's completely made from concrete. Yikes!

OTOH, imagine a home that's not prone to termite damage. That would be awesome. Makes me want to build any sort of house, underground or not, with any material that's not wood.

PS: I left ATX last year for the rest of the triangle by hill country and right around the 100th meridian west that's much less expensive and less prone to storms.

Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

#113

Seems pointless and expensive, and it's concrete that doesn't lend itself to modification or repair. 3D printing in this case appears to be used as a tech gimmick rather than an actually-scalable process, or it would already be in-use everywhere. The most inherently sensible home would be protected from wind (derecho, hurricane, and the uncommon tornado), fire, flooding, and severe heat and cold (and associated clima…

> The most inherently sensible home would be protected from wind (derecho, hurricane, and the uncommon tornado), fire, flooding, and severe heat and cold (and associated climate control costs) by building mostly underground on flat, stable, high ground. If I had the luxury of time and money that's the kind of home I'd build out, probably with a few Maginot line type turrets peeking out from the "roof".

For light, I'd have one or more glass or glass block domes on top.

I kind of like the idea of the conjoined egg-shaped rooms, but not the practicality of cylindrically- or compound-rounded walls.

Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

#114
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can. It’s the frame behind drywall then. Probably CNC cut plywood construction. And it’s more art than anything you might get from standard construction company. And crazy decorative art can be made from gypsum and integrated into drywall.

It’s a trick question sorta. You can’t make a compound curve out of sheet material. Drywall can bend in a single axis only. If you add a second axis (compound curves) it won’t really work. Think about trying to drywall a sphere. The best you can do is a high poly sphere.

That's what the mudder is for ;)

Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tear apart medical and other machines to recycle parts. I do often see 3d printed parts inside commercial machines, probably because they are making so few of them and it's more economical to just print a couple specialized parts.

How can you tell that they're 3d printed? Because they don't have a part number or the manufacturer's name and logo on them? I don't have a 3d printer myself so maybe it'd be obvious if I printed some.

They had the layer lines you see on FDM prints.

Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

#116

Why would someone want one of these ugly homes for $400k when for that price you can buy something much nicer?

I'm usually neutral on suburban hellscape buyers, but it's getting ridiculous. It made more sense to me I guess when 1/4 acre lots were standard. But these...man. The houses appear to be just a few feet from each other, and the yards are utterly pointless. I can't believe I find myself saying this, but it would have been much nicer to just build nice condos in the middle, and use the rest as shared greenspace.

Shared space sounds like communism. /s

Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

#117
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can. It’s the frame behind drywall then. Probably CNC cut plywood construction. And it’s more art than anything you might get from standard construction company. And crazy decorative art can be made from gypsum and integrated into drywall.

It’s a trick question sorta. You can’t make a compound curve out of sheet material. Drywall can bend in a single axis only. If you add a second axis (compound curves) it won’t really work. Think about trying to drywall a sphere. The best you can do is a high poly sphere.

It’s not a single sheet. It’s multiple sheets covered in gypsum shell. More sculpture than drywall. Relative worked for riches, egg and bells were his projects 25 years ago. It’s just many many hours designing it and even more sanding to get perfect shape. There are now 3D printers for such projects: https://www.voxeljet.com/3d-printing-solution/sand-casting/ Since it’s cheap and fast today riches lost interest.

Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

#119
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you finish the joints between sections of prefabricated walls? Where do you store hundreds of running feet of prefabricated wall during construction delays? How do you move sections of prefabricated wall into and within a dryed-in building? How do you trim a section to fit and extend another when construction is not ideal? Who is responsible when something is not right? And of course there’s getting UL listing…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huf_Haus Construction of a Huf Haus in the UK featured in the 2004 series of Grand Designs.

Those are awesome, does anyone export this to the states? We just got a prefab studio from Schildr that's manufactured in Turkey and disassembles into a sea container. I imagine something similar would work for Huff houses?

https://schildr.com/en/@schildrusa

Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas

#120

If you have the ability to pump concrete, and a gantry across the whole site, why wouldn't you pick and place concrete blocks or other materials rather than concrete the whole thing on site? Also, aren't these walls significantly more CO2 unfriendly than lumber, and more difficult to renovate? What if I need to get a builder in to do repairs, is there a concrete wall guy who knows how to repair them? Can it print mul…

It’s a gimmick. There is no point other than marketing.

You coulx print a thermite mound like passive cooking system into the house?
Post reply on HN