The recent news in 3D printing is about the race for 3D printed homes. In 2015 Winsun broke ground on contour crafting by claiming to 3D print 10 houses in a day. Winsun did this with their printers at a factory where the house parts were then shipped to the site for final assembly like any other concrete structure.
The main criticism of Winsun homes is that they are not that different from other prefab cement structures. They also had to be shipped and assembled on the building site, which increased the building and transportation cost. They were also very quiet with the media, which led to a lot of speculation that they were not honest about their production record.
It turned out that Winsun claims were too good to be true. In April news broke that Winsun had faked their apartments and had stolen Intellectual property (IP) from Dr. Berok Khoshnevis.
3D printing homes Technology
Dr. Berok Khoshnevis is regarded as the founder of contour crafting (the field of architecture that uses 3D printing). It appears that a student of his took his work and knocked it of in China.
Despite this setback in the 3D printing world, other companies are moving forward with 3D printing homes.
For 3D printing to be really usable as a house building technology, companies need to build 3D printers that can print the house directly on site.
HuaShang Tengda redeemed 3D printing homes by 3D printing a 400 m2 villa in 45 days.
Their 3D printer was capable of printing on site and around the rebar support structure assembled on the foundation. The extruder looks like two long snake fangs, which let the extruder move around rebar supports and piping. This design lets complex cement structures be printed on site and higher then unsupported structure.
HuaShang Tengda has certainly gone to the larger end of 3D printable homes. However in the USA the opposite trend is happening in housing.
Tiny homes are dwellings that are less than 400 square feet. They can be mobile on a class R trailer, and are often made with recycled materials.
Engineer Alex Le Roux designed the Vesta V2 Concrete Printer. This 2d version of his cement 3D printer was tested in Houston, TX. With a footprint of 28 square feet, this structure is a tinny 8 x 5 x 7 foot. It is just big enough for a person to fit in.
Vesta V2 can print at 0.3 ft a second and requires only one operator to feed cement and run the computer.
Alex Le Roux is working on a V3 of the Vesta printer, and plans to print a larger house in Michigan latter this year.
3D printing homes holds great promise for many people.
The biggest impact is in affordable housing. With 3D printed houses requiring minimal crews to run, the labor cost is greatly reduced.
These homes can be 3D printed with recycled cement from demolition sites, which reduces the energy consumed in producing new cement.
These structures can also withstand harsher weather with minimal upkeep, which will help lower home insurance rates.
Being 3D printed from approved g-code, it will be possible for a construction company to ensure it consistently builds a home to code, ensuring that sub-standard houses are not built. This will protect consumers and construction companies from litigation.
3D printed homes may be on the market in a matter of the next couple years if these companies can commercially produce house printers and can train operators quickly.
31 thoughts on “3D Printing Homes”
Interesting article.
i have seen a lot of this. some of the companies can really pump these out quickly. 3D printing is a step forward for humanity.
Interesting how companies manipuate the rules to try and meet targets in competitions
The ability to print around rebar and piping seems key to bring this to mass market. I’m curious how difficult it would be to rewire rooms in these homes or change any of the plumbing.
Yes, the others I have seen don’t have that which seems kind of necessary to me.
I think they can pause the print to lay out wiring or conduit. It would be interesting in the future to add another layer and just run the wiring along with the cement. Either way a small work crew can lay out the wiring while printing.
I think technology like this is going to change the way we rebuild following natural disasters, reusing the material laying around from destruction instead of just hauling it away to some dump site.
Pretty crazy. Wave of the future stuff!
This would be awesome to have for my daughter and son-in-law who both own small businesses.
Yeah we would love one aswell 😀
Cool device!
This looks like the way pretty much all houses will be built in the future
really really cool!!!
This sure would be fun to own.
Interesting future we can look forward to
Thats really cool! Id love to print a house,
One of the coolest uses of the tech Ive seen
thats cool!!!
3d printing is going to open up so much potential for home design
Unfortunately, to build houses in the USA, they must conform to the Uniform Building Code, which so far does not recognize 3D printing as an approved method of construction. And I’m not sure it really works, either. The idea of having “snake tongues” avoid the rebar and pipes as it deposited a non-slumping concrete mixture seems like it would introduce random gaps, which would make the building structurally unsound.
What makes a lot more sense to me is the idea of printing hollow forms for the concrete to fill, with or without rebar and pipes in place, and then using normal flowing concrete to fill in between the self-supporting walls of deposited clay-consistency material. That way, there would be no gaps, the concrete wouldn’t have to be primarily an odd mixture of questionable soundness, and the inspectors would be a lot happier. This isn’t my idea; it’s already been done: https://3dprint.com/44543/exone-3dealise-concrete-forms/
Sorry, I meant to write “snake fangs”
Andrew Werby
http://www.computersculpture.com
Amazing device for people with an inquiring mind.
I think that 3D printing is a great innovation for people
Awesome.
Really Cool Article!
Great device
Nice article.
This is awesome and amazing.
awesome stuff!
I hope eventually print a wonderful house just like in these pictures in the near future.
This could be a wonderful thing for low-income people/families. The price of housing seems to always trend upwards so there needs to be a way to offer good housing to those who can’t afford it. We all deserve to live in a home. Being able to 3D print a home in a day is an amazing breakthrough! I hope and pray that this catches on and is used to its highest level to help.