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.
3d printers haven’t changed that much… they’ve gotten easier to use, sure, but the materials and quality we’re printing is about the same as 10 years ago.
3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
91–100 of 121 posts
Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is nothing you can’t do with classical drywall. Curved walls, ornamentation, patterns, integrated furniture… you name it. 3d printing has a huge limitation here - you need support to print over empty area. I am sure it’s not fun removing concrete support pieces from huge concrete structure without cracks.
> There is nothing you can’t do with classical drywall. Curved walls, ornamentation, patterns, integrated furniture… you name it Okay, I name compound curves. Can I do that with drywall?
Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
#93I think everyone is missing the real reason for this. From TFA: > requires fewer workers what TFA didn't say, and which I'm sure is also true, is that the workers can also be less skilled. I found it fascinating that interior walls are also concrete, and wifi signals are blocked. I betcha cellular doesn't fare too well either, and not easily fixed with multiple access points.
I don’t care how many workers it takes if the result still costs $600k. Unless the houses can sell for half of traditional housing costs their main market will be building houses on the moon.
Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
#94Earlier 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.
3d printers haven’t changed that much… they’ve gotten easier to use, sure, but the materials and quality we’re printing is about the same as 10 years ago.
Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
#95Seems 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…
Anyway the modification of them is addressed in some of the videos in the show house. Essentially you use a circular saw with masonry teeth to cut new holes, they provide shade-matching grout to fill in an old hole. It's less flexible than sheetrock but about what modifying a cinder block wall would be. Unlike most cinder block commercial buildings, the wiring is inside the wall and not in an exposed conduit, there might have been one exception in a bathroom or something.
Over all, to my non-professional opinion, it seemed more expensive than traditional "stick built" but also higher quality, probably worth it if you wanted a high quality structure.
I have also visited their site in South Austin on St. Elmo, and the small "tiny houses" they built in the Community First village for the ex-homeless, but I wasn't able to go inside those.
My overall impression is that it's a great technology that will be used for more and more structures. Thus far I think they have been too traditional in their floor plans, they have been focusing on showing that they can build real up-to-code houses that banks will accept as collateral. Hopefully with their new cheaper printer, maybe in some area outside of HOAs and zoning, they can starting making some more interesting houses -- like round towers Victorian style, for example.
Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
#96How would plumbing and wiring work? The article states that the wall is a semi-hollow, corduroy pattern, so do the printers leave openings in the walls so pipes/wiring get shoved into them after?
They have videos discussing how you would add a light switch or remove one -- basically a mansonry hole saw, and matching grout to fill in.
It seemed slightly more trouble to do modifications than a cinder block wall, but the quality and strength was much higher. I went with low expectations but I was impressed.
I didn't see any walls at the stage of construction where I could see what the insulation was, whether is was expanding foam or fiberglass.
Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
#97Earlier 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.
3d printers haven’t changed that much… they’ve gotten easier to use, sure, but the materials and quality we’re printing is about the same as 10 years ago.
They have evolved into true click and forget machines.
Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
#98Earlier 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.
3d printers haven’t changed that much… they’ve gotten easier to use, sure, but the materials and quality we’re printing is about the same as 10 years ago.
Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
#99Re: 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion in Texas
#100If 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…
Is it purely that this robot never takes vacation and never asks for a raise? Feels a lot like this permits building a home largely without human labor, which I'm sure the VC class would be very excited about.
The quality of timber framed houses can vary considerably depending on who built them.