I really don’t understand why people don’t go for prefab walls instead. Am I missing something? It sounds to me that creating a house out of composable units that contain insulation, wiring and plumbing makes more sense.
The article says this uses only 30% of the concrete you’d otherwise use. Presumably prefab would use more.
By all accounts I have read that didn’t come from the company selling them, these constructions are terrible.
compared to brick houses, or compared to cardboard houses? anyway… every time there is a new technology, it is terrible. just remember when the first digital cameras or the first flat screen monitors came.
Compared to any structure that is actually up to code.
Horsehair plaster homes that are used as apartments with old metal clad wiring and lead paint are a thing. I think a 3D printed home is a step up.
Literally in the 3D printing for dummies book, it says that 3D printed houses that will be disposable will be part of the future and the next industrial revolution.
I don’t see a problem, lumber is expensive af and there’s a huge homeless problem here in the US, so if that tech was supported it could make villages for homeless people to get services and have a temp home. I say temp home because section 8 homes in general aren’t meant to be forever apartments and I’m going off of that trope for the term temp home, I just didn’t want to use the wording, “3D Printed Projects-Style Housing.”
The problem with this kind of innovation is that it’s improving what’s already one of the fastest and easiest parts of building a house. Digging foundations, plastering the walls, doing the plumbing, doing the electrics and laying the flooring can all individually take longer than the bricklaying, and are much harder to automate.
What’s the labor savings?
It’s like they forgot precast exists
Guessing you didnt read it, because its in danish.
The article specifically mentions that this technique uses 30% of the material that would have been used for precast.But what does that mean for strength? I also see surprisingly little “armouring”. Not sure how that’s called in English - the metal wires in-between.
I’m not sure about this company but there’s one in the US that has an embedded nozzle laying down steel cabling inside each concrete bead.
Rebar. Yes, there is no rebar and these houses are cracking and falling apart.
I’m just guessing, but it is probably reinforced with fiberglass or a similar fibers in the cement.
One of the things that this project is testing is how the foundations are made. They do not have to clear the trees to dig and level out the area to fill in loads of gravel just to make a concrete pour. They are somehow able to make the foundations around existing structures like trees and on somewhat uneven ground.
This machine looks much bigger than a wheelbarrow, and you still need to dig the foundation, so I don’t see how it could possibly need less space to be cleared than just pouring concrete into a hole would.
It runs on tracks, so it might be slimmer on the ground level than the conventional construction vehicles. Sure a wheelbarrow is smaller, but I don’t think that’s a realistic option, lol.
When I’ve seen foundations for homes get poured and they haven’t been on a large construction site that’s already been flattened (where the ability to work around things like trees wouldn’t matter), it’s been done by having one or two builders fill up a wheelbarrow with concrete where the concrete mixer lorry could drive to, then wheel it to where the foundations were being poured and empty their wheelbarrows into the foundations.
That is why developers over here love to sell houses that are just walls, windows, roof and facade. You get to juggle 10 different contractors until finished yourself
3D-Printed Houses Are Already Failing - Megaprojects https://youtu.be/nRLqld_jD_g
I watched this video a couple weeks ago and it’s pure click bait. He discussed one single instance where a known scammer takes advantage of a poor community and doesn’t do what he said he would. The video completely ignores all the progress the printer manufacturing companies are making and only devotes like 60 seconds at the very end to mention that the industry is improving rapidly.
Here’s a Tested video from last year where Adam visits one of the manufacturers. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=orurGdrlzIs
Tldw cracking in the concrete and quite scammy companies.
3D house printing has been a scam from day one. Not cheaper, not faster, not more reliable and they cannot be altered or upgraded in the future. Questionable R values.
These turds got pinched out but will all be knocked down in a decade.
As far as I have seen it’s very finicky. The concrete mixture is very special because normalnconcrete is not made for stacking layers and it’s also very sensitive to the weather. If it’s not exactly right it will start cracking.
I am not sure if anyone could yet demonstrate it at scale while being cheaper than traditional building.
You are correct. I watched one being built. It is only the walls, for one thing, they still did foundation, roof, interior framing the old-fashioned way. The concrete was trucked in on pallets and mixed on site and it looked like a ton of work, and the machine was always breaking, it looked like.
Honestly don’t know why they don’t print the concrete forms in plastic and inject concrete, injectable cast concrete has been a thing for like a hundred years. You could do your raceways and plumbing runs and all then fill.
Honestly don’t know why they don’t print the concrete forms in plastic and inject concrete, injectable cast concrete has been a thing for like a hundred years. You could do your raceways and plumbing runs and all then fill.
That would be a lot of waste plastic. Concrete is very heavy. That means the form hast to be extremely tough. For plastic that means a lot of plastic. At a certain point you won’t win anything there either.
You think about it the wrong way. Do it progressively : 3d print the thin plastic form 10cm high, then pour the concrete, let it dry, print 10 more cm, pour again … That way you need very few plastic.
That would take a very long time.
That would be a lot of waste plastic.
I wouldn’t think so. This may be one of the few cases where recycling plastic is actually practical. Recycling plastic is normally a big problem because it’s a very dirty supply stream. Plastic products often have multiple types of plastic laminated together, often include plastic labeling, etc. Even if you make a plastic consumer good out of a reusable thermoplastic, recycling is still impractical. Plus the main contaminants - food remains, react chemically at the temperatures necessary to remelt the plastic.
But this? You would be printing out huge slabs of solid plastic. Imagine big blocks and slabs of plastic 3"-12" thick. They could be made entirely of a single type of plastic. You use a thermoplastic, one that can be melted and reused repeatedly. Make them with no dyes and a chemistry optimized for maximum recyclability.
The printer prints out big plastic forms. Then the forms are injection-filled with concrete. Workers then pry or chip off the plastic forms and collect the debris for recycling. At the recycling plant, the pieces are given a basic cleaning, but the contaminants are almost entirely bits of concrete. Plastic melts at a temperature far far below the melting or decomposition point of any of concrete’s components. Concrete dust can simply be filtered out from the stream of molten plastic.
And that is a lot of plastic on one job. But because of that, builders would actually be incentivized to recycle it. You’re talking potentially thousands of dollars worth of plastic sitting there.
This wouldn’t be a practical replacement for regular rectangular concrete formwork. If you just want straight vertical walls and floors, since you have to tear-down the dorms afterwards, this isn’t going to be competitive with regular formwork. But what if you want to live in a curvy house? What if you want a more flowing space with continuously varying arches, curves, and vaults? This kind of almost organic home form is not within the budget of the average person. The forms required are just too complex. For this type of organic modern architecture, I could see 3D printing plastic forms being a practical option.
You’re right, it would require a lot of plastic. But existing concrete forms also require a lot of material. We’re just able to reuse the forms many times.
Problem is that plastics do not recycle too well. Every time you melt plastic it degrades. That means you always need new plastic and some gets lost. If you want to use recycled plastic you have to add virgin plastic every time. Also printing such thick plastic will take a long time. I don’t think it scales. If you want concrete forms, then generic preforms made from wood are way more practical.
Eh, some can be recycled up to ten times. And it’s not like you can use plywood forms infinitely either. Those break down after 10-20 uses as well on average. And, just like plastic, every time you reuse plywood molds some of the material gets lost. Some gets damaged when prying the forms off. Plywood sheets get cut down to the shape of the next job. Etc.
And again, I’m imagining this primarily where plywood forms are not practical without very skilled and intricate work. Imagine a home built like this. The cost would be completely impractical for normal residential budgets. But printed forms and injected concrete? Maybe.
Yes but plywood is made of wood. A renewable resource. Also I must be int but nobody needs these kinds of houses and we don’t need them to be easily manufacturable. Tbh they look incredibly impractical. We need to build a lot of practical houses. If someone wants a house like this they probably have the means to get it handmade.
There are plastics that can be made from renewable materials as well. Not that I’m advocating for 3D printed houses, I think that is a terrible idea, but not for any of the arguments made here.
That’s kinda my point. It’s really a materials and structure engineering problem. How do you automate house-building? Maybe you don’t need concrete at all, or only in strategic places.
Exactly. Automated house building could take many forms. It could be a big 3D concrete printer on a gantry crane. It could be a crew of humanoid robots using ordinary human power tools. It could be a robot arm on a powered dolly that lifts and nails, glues, or welds panels and beams into place.
Also we should be moving away from concrete as a building material where possible because it’s terribly energy intensive to make. Of course we need it for some things but there are better materials for walls in normal residential buildings.
I agree. We should work on 3d printing wood. Stick houses are superior
Like chip wood into strands, mix with glue and print it out like one big shape of plywood?
where possible because it’s terribly energy intensive to make
Bruh it takes a mixer and water. The only thing that would get used more than not, is water.
Lumber is stupid expensive, brick homes are labor intensive and more expensive, you can do mixed substrate homes but that’s expensive too. Glass paneling is usually only for stupid rich people or businesses and metal siding with metal interior and a metal roof, you may as well live in a shipping container.
The energy intensive part is in creating the dry mix.
Mostly in creating the lime.Edit: Here’s the breakdown for anyone interested.
And electricity is carbon neutral because it comes out of the power outlet.
Muh Cynicism: Well once the billionaires charge us a larger premium for nuclear energy maybe science will invent magic, har har har.
Nahhhh but to be honest no one can be happy with anything when it comes to energy: Hydroelectric, the fish. Solar, the agricultural and livestock. Nuclear, land and ocean contamination that can last as long as the US has been around.
3D printing houses that can solve a housing crisis, the process it takes to make the concrete.
Can’t we just shut up and and enjoy scientific advances.
“Der terk er jerbs”
~ Brickies“Deh derk eh durrrr!!!”
Can anyone tell me now this compares in efficiency to traditional building? It looks like a lot of setup
Not sure about speed but I imagine it could be pretty speedy, if for no other reason than the fact that it can run with much fewer workers and probably also running during the night. I mean even if it was half as slow as manual labour, if it ran for 24 hours, it would still be faster overall.
But another point is that it uses much less material, 70% less according to the article. I suppose that helps with costs and CO2 emissions.
If you’re switching to concrete, emissions will be worse than pretty much anything else you could use. Concrete is already responsible for some 8-12% of all global CO2 emissions.
What do you mean switching? Think this is more about using less concrete than stopping to use it entirely. That also helps, but yea it’s a problem.
Most houses around these parts are made of wood, not concrete.
US defaultism
A lot of the rest of the world build with brick and mortar.
In Denmark it’s usually bricks (very common and traditional) or other stone like materials or concrete. Never understood why there is this difference across the world in how houses are usually built, but wood seems a very… Temporary material for something like a house? I’ve lived in buildings from the 1910s, I can’t imagine anything made of wood lasting that long.
If they’re taken care of properly they can last centuries
My house is wood and was built in 1923.
Houses are made of wood in the US because we didn’t chop down our forests in the 1500s. European houses generally fall into the category of 1000+ year old stone or modern brick
That makes sense. 70% less material is a staggering amount, that would probably offset if it ran on literal coal and steam. Maybe. That’s hyperbolic but you get what I was thinking of.
Honestly, this would be a really cool way to build Cobb houses, which are very environmentally friendly, have fantastic insulation, and are some of our oldest still standing structures, iirc. Good hat and boots (roof with overhang and foundation), 3d printed Cobb walls, and a lime coating, and I could see this really making housing costs a lot lower in certain communities.
Biggest downside to Cobb from my research is just that electrical and plumbing typically needs to be running conduit on top of the wall, instead of inside the wall, if you want the option to upgrade or change it later.
I want to 3D print bricks and use it to build my house so I can use a smaller printer.
If this is 3d printing, making love is bio engineering.
How does this not meet the definition of 3d printing? The machines that do this are legitimately just giant core-XY machines with concrete hoppers instead of a hot end
A shame they’re not brave enough to print a building on a bedslinger.
I could totally upgrade my ender to do this…
Sex is bio engineering. It is just that you don’t get to decide the engineering part. Your genes and proteins do.
It’s neat in concept, but such a waste of material over stick framing.
Also, do you need to bust out the impact drill every time you want to hang a photo? What it you need to move an outlet?
Also also, what happened if you foundation shifts, like at all?
And how’s the insulation on this? Nothing is thermally broken, you’re gonna have a good amount of heat going through those rounded corners.
I always thought it curious that Americans like to build houses that blow away while experiencing lots of hurricanes all the time.
Sure, pretend like European clay roofing tiles do not blow off and European stonework isn’t a patch quilt of continuous repair.
Actually the only tiles blowing away, even in a storm are those already lose. And they are easy and cheap to replace.
easy and cheap to replace
That’s the guiding philosophy under the American housing industry.
Just with not caring about the safety of the occupants at all.
Stone or concrete walls are normal in many countries.
You can indeed use a hammer drill to drill holes. You can buy them for as little as 30 dollars these days. And you can use an angle grinder to make cutouts for cables/tubes, and apply plaster afterwards.
Many houses in the colder regions already have cavity walls with insulation in between the walls regardless of the building method, so I don’t think this method is very wasteful in amount of material.
However, I agree that 3D printing houses had various downsides, such as the weird surface, inflexibility to modify/expand/repair after the initial build and potentiality worse insulation characteristics. I am more of a believer in prefabricated houses, where building houses becomes an industry instead of a project.
As to the stone thing: most of the houses and apartments in Germany are mainly stone walls. Somehow we manage it here.
Benefits include: massive soundproofing. Heat and cold envelope. Stability of buildings in tighter blocks. Build once, use forever.
Store is just fine, and yes we have an impact drill. It cost 30 Euro and does all of the light duty stuff we need.
Renovations are tougher, but also rarer.
Stone is horrible for insulation.
Yes, which is why we stuff the space between inner and outer wall with insulation, usually mineral or glass wool, which have excellent insulation capabilities.
That’s why modern European buildings aren’t just piles of rocks.
Most of Europe gets 4 seasons, most of Europe uses stone/brick/concrete housing, most of Europe is doing fine or better.
You print 2 layers with an air gap between. Themis gap gives room for plumbing and electrical, and also serves as an insulation layer. A thin layer of still air has relatively low thermal conductivity, minimizing heat exchange between inside and outside.
The people who thought 3D printed houses were innovative had no idea how houses are built.
