There are a few of them. Modbots [mudbots.com] seems to be going places with their units.
Can you provide a link to a pricing structure for these guys that isn't BS-walled? In other words, "provide all this contact information so we can call and estimate how much we can screw you out of?" I'm always suspicious of companies that say "call for estimate" without any real estimate on their websites, and I don't call them, because they tend to be scams at one level or another. It reminds me of "call for one weird trick to [insert]."
Having worked in the building trades, there's a damn good reason why they can't give you a price: every building site is different. Where I live the hill is larger and steeper than most Midwest ski resorts. At the bottom of the hill it used to be swamp and any concrete structure will need serious site preparation before it can deal with the concentrated weight. On the other side of the valley it's a landslide zone. A few miles south of here there is nice flat solid ground that would be perfect, but it's
While this technology could be useful for bespoke (i.e. luxury) designed homes, it doesn't really make sense for low cost housing. It's bit like the idea that we will replace injection moulding machines with 3D printers. It doesn't make sense because injection moulding is dirt cheap if you are making large quantities.
Similarly we already know how to build cheaply - it's call prefabricated housing. You build most of the house using robots in a factory and then assemble on site. Of course there are things that still need to be done by hand, but that is the same of this system as well. But in general, it is easier to put one robot in a factory than having to have lots of robots around the place.
In any case, building houses these days is already extremely cheap. The problem in almost every market where housing is overpriced is that land is incredibly expensive, and that is largely a function of how much money people can borrow to bid up the price of this limited resource. So far it seems that central banks around the world are happy to pump huge amounts into doing this, so until that changes, even if this machine offered a real reduction in costs, all that would mean is the land value becomes even higher as the proportion of the house price that is attributable to the actual building can be lower - in other words more money for simply owning land.
Still it's nice seeing some new ideas being tried in this space. Certainly for architecturally designed houses, it has the potential for some interesting stuff.
OK, so the robot is expensive (no doubt), but the building materials are cheaper and stronger than a typical wood framed house. It's also going to be a lot more resistant to weather and bugs. I would rather have something like this than one of those "modular" pre-fab homes that are lowered onto a foundation with a crane and then joined together and finished. I think this is absolutely the future for sustainable housing. There are a number of competing technologies in this space that all use something akin to "printing" the home layer by layer with a relatively thin bead of concrete. And it also opens up the possibility of easily changing the design in software without having to keep as much wood and fasteners on hand to complete construction. I look forward to these being more widely available.
Concrete is way more expensive than wood. Way more. Why?
Well, you still have to frame the entire inside of the house, and insulate, the roof has to be there, so you're only replacing the 2x6 walls with interior framing. And you still need to exterior clad the walls on something, and you still need to insulate.
So is concrete cheaper than a bunch of 2x6 or 2x8 load bearing walls? No.
Solid concrete is more expensive, but foamed aircrete that has the density of hardwood or pine has long been a standard, approved building material in Europe and alleviates your concerns. Plus, it's insulative.
Indeed - and the combination of a 3D printed solid concrete shell filled with aircrete for stiffening and insulation has some real potential. You could probably even do both simultaneously - print a foot of shell, fill with aircrete, and print the next foot of shell while the aircrete dries enough to pour the next layer.
How are the walls reinforced for earthquake protection? Not mentioned in the fluffy web site. Somehow, I expect that standard rebar doesn't work with 3D printing.
Then, concrete is one of the worst materials to use from a GHG perspective. There are some things that have to be concrete in most cases, like foundations. But if you have the option to build the structure from wood that would be at least potentially carbon-neutral or close to it. Concrete by its nature produces large amounts of CO2 in the manufact
>How are the walls reinforced for earthquake protection? Not mentioned in the fluffy web site. Somehow, I expect that standard rebar doesn't work with 3D printing.
I would imagine the most robust method would be to stop thinking of the 3D printed portion as the wall - instead think of it as a casting form that also doubles as permanent structural and weather cladding. As/after the form is printed, install rebar and pour the aircrete as the "real" part of the wall. Aircrete is quite strong enough for a 1-
Have you priced out traditional wood building materials lately? Prices are through the roof. Concrete prices, on the other hand, are about half of what they were in 2018.
It looks like they are talking about large commercial buildings.
Insurance quotes were obtained for builder’s risk insurance and commercial property insurance based on a 100,000 square-foot, 4-story apartment building comprising 8 two-bedroom and 14 one-bedroom apartments per floor.
There is a paragraph after that that links to a PDF that is a dead link. (I tried the wayback machine too) so if that part applies to single-family home construction I can't tell.
>Well, you still have to frame the entire inside of the house Why? You probably want to plaster over the rough surface so it looks nicer, but there's no need for any framing so long as you integrate channels for plumbing and wiring within the walls. In fact, framing would eliminate one of the biggest strengths of 3D printing - the ability to make walls any shape you want. Modern houses are rectilinear because that's considerably cheaper to build with pre-fab rectilinear components like dimensional lumbe
Wood-framed houses are typical in the US, not so much in NW Europe for example.
There's several variations on 'modular home': - one module is an entire room - one module is a wall - one module is a segment of a wall All have different tradeoffs for flexibility vs. cost and time required to finish construction at the building site.
This printed home is an empty shell and would require e.g. insulation on the exterior walls and floors. Prefab walls allow you to do this in the factory.
The question is, how sustainable is concrete, vs. wood or brick?
The US has many variations on 'modular' or prebuilt homes. Sears used to sell premade kits that were shipped to your build site by railway. There are many of these structures still standing today.
"Modular Home" long meant "mobile home on a foundation." The construction processes are very similar. The cheapness of everything done that way also gave them a bad name.
"Modular" now means building actual modules, more by room than by building segment. That's more expensive than the original, but less so than building it on-site from sticks.
Then you can move down toward "kits" like Sears used to sell. Modernized versions exist. Basically large wall segments come on trucks and are set up once the site and f
They're not replacing injection moulding. They're replacing hand crafting. People don't like prefabs, and they're not widespread. Residential construction is hugely expensive and hasn't really improved much in decades.
They're not replacing injection moulding. They're replacing hand crafting. People don't like prefabs, and they're not widespread. Residential construction is hugely expensive and hasn't really improved much in decades.
People don't like prefabs because to them, a prefab house brings up a trailer park and houses that are basically 8 to 10 feet wide by 30-50 feet long.
Modern prefab housing consists of multiple modules and often look like stick build (traditional build on site) housing. Except that instead of taking a few months to build, it's ready in 2 weeks and a day or two of installation. In that two weeks the site is prepared - the basement and foundation is laid down and built.
And yes, you can have your huge cathedral ceilings, huge rooms (a room may spam multiple modules) and every modern amenity you'd want in your house. And yes, multiple floors with staircases.
A small house can consist of as small as 3 modules, larger houses and involve 4 of 5 modules, and unless you knew, you wouldn't guess it was prefab. It's really modular homes.
If you want even more customization, you can involve a small bit of custom stick-build fabrication after the modules are installed.But you basically can go from an bare site to a ready to occupy home on the inside of a month - two weeks to for the factory to make the house, a week to ship it, a day or two to install it and finish it (seal the gaps).
The reason it's so quick is the trades are all on site - the factory works full time, so the trades are full time employees working full shifts. The lumber is framed and the drywallers are right there installing the drywall, then the electricians, plumbers, etc are working on it the next day. Within a few days the walls are taped and painted and flooring laid down and the finishes are applied. It's a rather remarkable process.
There was a TV show a few years back that featured prefab homes and they looked just like all the other stick-built houses on the street. The only difference was one day there was an empty site with a basement dug out, and the next day a house appeared.
Modern prefab housing consists of multiple modules and often look like stick build (traditional build on site) housing.
Yes, and modern pre-fab housing is also no where near as cheap or easy as traditional pre-fab. It's important to remember the difference. You get the choice of:
1. Clone house. 2. Built by robot house. 3. Expensive house.
The choice isn't binary, you can combine elements of the three but make no mistake you're moving between them constantly.
I haven't been in a lot of prefab homes, and I would wager there is a wide variety in the quality of products available. That said my parents owned a prefab home and it had a very cheap feel to it. Everything structural felt like it had more give to it than I would expect. Exterior doors shook whole walls when closed, and even the extremely light weight interior doors felt like they moved the wall when you closed them firmly. The floors all had a good bit of flex in them, enough that I could notice the diff
My grandparents got a prefab when they retired from ranching. They kept a small bit of land and put the house there. Essentially take two modules, each similar to a mobile home in width, and put them side by side and it's a full size two bedroom home, with room to invite tons of people over for thanksgiving. Add a full length deck and prefab steel garage, and it was a very nice home.
I'd say it depends on the prefab. House kits have been popular for decades. You are somewhat right about residential construction, however the actual labor costs are pretty flat, the big costs are in the fact it is exceedingly difficult to just go out and buy a piece of land ready to build on. Most residential is tied up into developments with layers upon layers of contractors, architects, engineers and shareholders, that add more and more cost to each home, even as they end up producing dozens if not hun
It depends where the land is. I've been pricing things out here. Averages for detached residential construction is $118 - $189 per square foot. So about $240k on the low end. If you're in a major city the lot to put that on is easily going to run at twice that. If you're in the country, it might be less than a quarter. Rough estimates put the actual construction cost from more than 3/4 down to maybe 1/4 unless you get silly.
Yes, labour costs are the problem. That's why I said it's 3d printing versus hand ca
Prefabs can be nice if you get a high end one. There are companies in Germany that do them, you can choose from a variety of layouts and then customize stuff like the location of power sockets and type of windows. The resulting building does not look cheap or even pre-fabricated.
In Japan they do something similar but with steel frames. Again the quality is excellent.
There are plenty of nice pre-fab options in the states as well. They are finally gaining some traction especially in the north east where energy efficiency is most precious because heating costs are already high and finer tolerances mean not just a more efficient home but a more comfortable one.
The big hurdle in the US is that as another poster pointed out a lot people have a preconceived notion of what factory built housing is. They think it means a trailer. Where as what it really means today is things l
The search issue is real, especially in a state like California where the seller Must Disclose Everything. If a house is modular or "manufactured" even in part that must be disclosed, and will result in difficulty selling.
At least the issues with building codes and modular are more or less over with, but some places still try to make it difficult.
Right and that is why I blame the reality industry. They need to educate secondary market consumers. These agents need to say:
"Don't worry I am not taking you to see some ratty double wide. You'll like this. You'd never know its a manufactured home standing outside or in until you cut into a wall or something. All you going to do different is marvel at how perfect every surface is when you put a level or hold plumb line against it, and remark how nice a warm you are every winter and how there are no drafts
In my area of Pennsylvania framing is made in a factory, trucked to the site, and assembled on a foundation. They do this with walls and roof trusses. The frame goes up, then the walls and roof deck/roof go on, then siding, then internal finishing. My house which was built in 1940 used hardwood tongue and groove for the roof deck. Up until recently plywood was the standard and now OSB is the standard. OSB isnâ(TM)t good for wet areas because the binding material swells when wet itâ(TM)s just chea
All depends on scale and how much of this will go unassisted.
Injection moulding followed by manual assembly of the pieces isn't cheaper than fully automated production, even if parts of it are just the "inferior" 3D printing. If the house could be built through 2 hours of manual set-up and material delivery, 80 hours of robot run-time (with one person supervising 40 robots, remotely), then 2 hours of manual clean-up, they have a chance to compete with prefab, which still needs to be assembled manually, then
Nothing you say makes any sense.
1. 3D printed houses use considerably less material, anywhere from +30%, faster to build, safer to build, and faster to build;
2. prefab houses have considerable transportation costs, are incredibly inefficient, and are not durable.
3. You can build a street of 3D printed houses in the time it takes to build one traditional house.
Not all prefabricated structures are the same. Modern conventionally-built homes alraady use some prefabricated parts, the ceiling trusses and floor trusses are typically engineer's-stamped prefabricated parts that are built in factories and delivered to the jobsite. Sometimes a builder and architect will design based on off-the-shelf parts, sometimes they'll call for a new design that may or may not end up in a truss manufacturer's catalog thereafter. Same goes for windows, window fitting companies are
You can print the internal walls along with the external ones, and plastering is likely to be faster and cheaper than framing and installing drywall. In fact I would expect a plastering robot to be developed in the not-too-distant future.
"You can print the internal walls along with the external ones, and plastering is likely to be faster and cheaper than framing and installing drywall. In fact I would expect a plastering robot to be developed in the not-too-distant future."
Why stop at that? Once the resolution goes up, one could print furniture, bathtub, toilet... perhaps even decorate the inner walls, artwork....
Concrete furniture is heavy, so it's pretty much built-in wherever you put it. There are places that can work (bathtubs are a good example), but for the most there's an awful lot to be said for being able to rearrange the furniture - especially when someone new buys it.
A plastering robot would be a very different thing that a wall-printing robot - yeah, you've got to get the plaster up there, but then it becomes a trowling job to give the surface a nice smooth, even finish. You don't need high resolution
"Concrete furniture is heavy, so it's pretty much built-in wherever you put it. There are places that can work (bathtubs are a good example), but for the most there's an awful lot to be said for being able to rearrange the furniture - especially when someone new buys it."
The new owner just shredders it and prints a new one.
While this technology could be useful for bespoke (i.e. luxury) designed homes, it doesn't really make sense for low cost housing. It's bit like the idea that we will replace injection moulding machines with 3D printers. It doesn't make sense because injection moulding is dirt cheap if you are making large quantities.
Define cheap. As long as society is letting people go homeless and saying we can't afford to house them, isn't there something to shoot for? Not that it's not outrageously expensive; as is, Salt Lake City found it was cheaper to pay rent for an apartment for homeless people and give them a chance to get on their feet, than to criminalize them and constantly feed them through police custody, courts, and jails for, say, sleeping on a bench.
We can and should build decent homes in bulk. We should give people
Earthbag, etc. construction is very labor intensive. They're a nice option for building with cheap materials if you have little money and lots of time to do the work yourself - but if you pay the laborers a decent wage it gets really expensive. And unfortunately a lot of those potential benefits rely on doing the job properly - meaning that neither DIY nor cheap-labor options are going to deliver them well.
3D printing alone leaves much to be desired - but take a double-wall 3D printed shell, insert rebar,
We donâ(TM)t need to 3D print houses for people to solve homelessness. We are soon to have a surplus of available empty space in the form of office buildings due to companies switching to remote work and reducing overhead.
Homelessness is a more comprehensive issue than saying by build more housing, tho thatâ(TM)s part of it. Some homeless are so because of cost. Others because they canâ(TM)t find work. Many have substance abuse problems and mental health problems and they canâ(TM)t stay
I think "letting people go homeless" is a bit of a stretch.
In many cases, homelessness isn't about giving people a home, or throwing money at them so they can afford one.
Yet they have an ever-expanding homelessness problem.
While homelessness CAN be a financial problem. In many cases, it's a mental health and poor life skills problem.
Quoting an organization that has actually done their homework on this topic:
"Our model consistently indicates that within CoCs, changes in household median rental prices and homelessness rate estimates were statistically significantly related over our period of analysis. Specifically, a $100 increase in median rental price was associated with about a 9 percent increase in the estimated homelessness rate. For instance, in a CoC with a homelessness rate of 16 individuals per 10,000, a $100 increase in househol
This technology looks to replace one of the more expensive parts, bricks and brick layers, although it will need a bit more refinement to match the look
right now labor is cheap because we bring in tons of cheap immigrant labor (much of it legal under the H2B program). That may or may not last. If it doesn't then the economics change suddenly.
You've seen this in Europe with how they grow food. Several European countries lost their influx of refugees used as pickers. They changed up their farming (doing stuff like growing food in raised rows or building advanced machines) to reduce labor costs when they didn't have a workforce that cost almost nothing.
While this technology could be useful for bespoke (i.e. luxury) designed homes, it doesn't really make sense for low cost housing.
Other way around. Poor people might be persuaded to move into a structure that looks like squeezed toothpaste. But as a master carpenter who specializes on one-off houses says, "The money is in the finish."
I watch a lot of those prefabricated factory built homes going up on home building shows and it's always like "8 hours later our house is built!" and then they spend another 12 months finishing the interior and siding and glazing and...
I suspect this 3D printed house is similarly super fast to frame and then just as slow to run plumbing, electric, drywall, side etc.
The process is deliberately designed to be labour intensive to boost local employment and local production without requiring prior construction experience or skills. The moladi construction process mostly uses local supplies apart from the reusable formwork and a special additive to aerate the mortar (concrete without stone) to reduce the density, thereby enhancing the thermal properties of the structure.
That's very cool. I wonder how it competes on cost with this robot.
True, but forms and an aerating cement mixer are going to have a much lower initial investment. I suspect that long term the robot would be the better value, **but** the forms are going to allow the builder to expand much faster. If I were somewhere that unskilled labor was cheap and available I'd definitely go the forms route, but for the US and Europe the robot would probably get my money.
"I want people to not be afraid of automation...it is just a different tool and different method. But it's still the same product; we are still building a house at the end of the day," Andersen says.
All it's really missing is a facade on the outside to replace the almost stucco appearance of the huge print layer heights. The inside of the house is normal drywall and flooring construction. It wouldn't be too much more effort than was already spent cleaning that up although this house is almost certainly going to someone who is buying it because it's a 3d printed house so they wouldn't exactly mind layer heights.
Even if it couldn't be fixed, a whole lot of people would jump on the opportunity. Hell, here
There's always ICF, which to me is far better than this, and really just as quick to build.
It comes with insulation attached, and already has interior points to attach drywall/cabinets/etc over the insulation layer.
This product requires attaching interior and exterior insulation after the fact, and creating interior attach points, or building an interior frame, to put drywall on the inside. So ICF does all that, which negates the day or so it takes to assemble the "blocks" for the pour. And once the pour starts, it should be faster than a 3D robot laying down layer after layer.
Have to say, completely agree, there are much better ways to improve the construction time at least. This really seems like an optimization for human labor cost during framing at the expense of other optimizations that can be done with ICF like the insulation and attachment points for internal and external coverings. Real cost for home construction is kind of that balance between an assembly line's ability to mass produce identical objects vs homeowner's ability to customize and at least right now this tech
ICF is interesting stuff - I have a feeling it's going to loose out to 3D printing though - consider: You can print a double wall and pour foamed aircrete in the space between them. Insulation plus greatly increased strength encased inside a solid concrete shell that doesn't need any additional cladding inside or out.
Aircrete can be pretty strong stuff even on its own, so you could potentially print quite thin solid walls for the form, just enough to contain a foot of aircrete while it sets - you could ev
Both processes are somewhat similar to begin: First you build a casting form - either assembling the ICF panels, or printing the concrete shell. Then you pour - structural concrete for the ICF, aircrete structural insulation for the print (or some other insulation, doesn't *have* to be cast)
At that point the 3D printed walls are done aside from cosmetic finishing, while the ICF still need to be clad.
Drywall became popular because lathe-and-plaster construction is a lot more expensive. Applyin
But if you're adhering an inner drywall, and an exterior facade material, then this only is replacing the framing and not even all of that since you still have to install trusses (and possibly interior walls). Also where is your insulation, and where are you running your MEP? I have so many questions.
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Depends on the construction method. If it's a brick building then it takes a lot of time and skilled labour to construct the shell.
The type of construction depends on the location. Sometimes it has to be one type due to local conditions, sometimes it just needs to fit in with existing architecture.
I've seen brickies at work around here... Then again the new housing market is badly screwed up in the UK so logic probably plays little part in the selection of construction methods.
So concrete as a material for light residential has been tried before in the US, but was plagued with issues besides costs. I have numerous questions about this procedure. Also some real questions about that listing: as far as I can see it's some renders of the house-to-be, a front elevation, a picture of a completely different prototype house, and some interiors from that house filled with what looks like rendered furniture. This does not give me confidence.
This. Old school concrete uses rebar in foundations. Imagine can place rebar in key support then let the bot pour.
Re: Concrete Housing (+1)
drewsup 2 minutes ago
Where is the rebar? Straight layered concrete is not all that strong to lateral forces IIRC
Concrete with rebar only lasts 30 years before the rust gets it, in the breathing gaps and cracks where the water can enter, as things expand and contract at different rates.
Try proper bricks. Can't go wrong with bricks. They will last almost literally forever.
You're thinking of concrete in roadways and bridges. In something like an ICF home, this isn't the case. You build homes with things like vapor barriers and water control layers to avoid this sort of thing. And you're not throwing down megatons of sodium chloride on it every time it snows.
As for "proper bricks". No. Too much variability in brick quality. Which is why it's primarily doing most of its business as a veneer for homes today. Bricks are generally too porous, making them susceptible to moisture tra
Yes, a totally automated brick-laying robot the size of the printer that built that house would be amazing. You could bring the price of a brick house down to at least parity with a stick-built shitbox. I imagine you could make it do curves without to much extra effort. And adding the ability to do designwork (that doesn't involve rotating the bricks vertically at all, anyway) would be an easy value add... like:
This is an excellent point. I suppose the printer could lay in rebar, but it seems like it would be tough to get the print head around it. Assuming that it's a fiber reinforced concrete there is probably some appreciable shear strength, but I wouldn't imagine much. If the interior walls are also concrete and tie in, then that could give lateral support, but then you are stuck with structural concrete interior walls.
Uum, parametrization? Higher order functions/machines? (Let the parameters *be* machines (with their own parameters.) We can ramp this up all the way to monad transformers over algebraix data types.
I thought Slashdot was a place for geeks and programmers...
Especially concrete with rebar. It makes the guy with the hammer drill, five floors away from you, sound like he's right the other side of the wall.
And steel and concrete expand and contract differently with heat and cold, causing gaps in-between, where water can enter, rust the steel, and ruin the entire thing. This is exactly why that stuff usually doesn't last more than 30 years before it becomes an invisible danger.
Meanwhile, brick walls from Roman times are still standing in my city, and if they got a l
This has already been done better. In the US, concrete is expensive, but I grew up in Greece where concrete concrete & bricks are the preferred building materials anyway for the price and characteristics, so prebuilt homes are a popular choice. Unlike 3D printing, they are can be mass produced, they are structurally stronger (it's a seismically active country, so the walls are reinforced concrete with an anti-seismic design), and when they probably set up faster than 3D printing - after the foundation i
"I want people to not be afraid of automation...it is just a different tool and different method. But it's still the same product; we are still building a house at the end of the day," says Kirk Andersen
It doesn't seem like it would do much to change the cost or speed of house building one way or another. The shell of the building is just one part of construction. You still need foundation, insulation, plaster / render, water & gas plumbing, electricity, ventilation, support beams, carpentry, glazing, roofing, paint and final fit.
Fast construction techniques already exist. For example insulated concrete formwork lets you build a house with LEGO like polystyrene blocks that you pour concrete between.
One of the most important considerations in buying a home is how much you are going to be able to sell it for when you eventually move. Factory-built homes are worth less than site-built homes, no matter how fancy you make them. I don't know what that means if you bring the factory to the site in robot form, but I'm not going to be one of the first to find out.
I believe the entire idea of printed houses is stupid. If you want a quality, low cost house you should buy a prefab home built in a factory. Factory built homes can be put up in the same amount of time as a 3D printed home, probably less.
There's no real need for 3D printed houses, it's just a fad built on the 3D printing fad.
ICF produces structures with integral, efficient insulation using conventional concrete pumps which are readily available with no investment in a "CNC concrete layering system" (nothing is "printed") that sits idle between highly specialized jobs.
How Much Is Said Robot (Score:3)
and where can I buy one?
Re:How Much Is Said Robot (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a few of them. Modbots [mudbots.com] seems to be going places with their units.
Can you provide a link to a pricing structure for these guys that isn't BS-walled? In other words, "provide all this contact information so we can call and estimate how much we can screw you out of?" I'm always suspicious of companies that say "call for estimate" without any real estimate on their websites, and I don't call them, because they tend to be scams at one level or another. It reminds me of "call for one weird trick to [insert]."
Re: (Score:3)
Having worked in the building trades, there's a damn good reason why they can't give you a price: every building site is different. Where I live the hill is larger and steeper than most Midwest ski resorts. At the bottom of the hill it used to be swamp and any concrete structure will need serious site preparation before it can deal with the concentrated weight. On the other side of the valley it's a landslide zone. A few miles south of here there is nice flat solid ground that would be perfect, but it's
Re: (Score:2)
Not suitable for mass production (Score:5, Insightful)
While this technology could be useful for bespoke (i.e. luxury) designed homes, it doesn't really make sense for low cost housing. It's bit like the idea that we will replace injection moulding machines with 3D printers. It doesn't make sense because injection moulding is dirt cheap if you are making large quantities.
Similarly we already know how to build cheaply - it's call prefabricated housing. You build most of the house using robots in a factory and then assemble on site. Of course there are things that still need to be done by hand, but that is the same of this system as well. But in general, it is easier to put one robot in a factory than having to have lots of robots around the place.
In any case, building houses these days is already extremely cheap. The problem in almost every market where housing is overpriced is that land is incredibly expensive, and that is largely a function of how much money people can borrow to bid up the price of this limited resource. So far it seems that central banks around the world are happy to pump huge amounts into doing this, so until that changes, even if this machine offered a real reduction in costs, all that would mean is the land value becomes even higher as the proportion of the house price that is attributable to the actual building can be lower - in other words more money for simply owning land.
Still it's nice seeing some new ideas being tried in this space. Certainly for architecturally designed houses, it has the potential for some interesting stuff.
Re:Not suitable for mass production (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, so the robot is expensive (no doubt), but the building materials are cheaper and stronger than a typical wood framed house. It's also going to be a lot more resistant to weather and bugs. I would rather have something like this than one of those "modular" pre-fab homes that are lowered onto a foundation with a crane and then joined together and finished. I think this is absolutely the future for sustainable housing. There are a number of competing technologies in this space that all use something akin to "printing" the home layer by layer with a relatively thin bead of concrete. And it also opens up the possibility of easily changing the design in software without having to keep as much wood and fasteners on hand to complete construction. I look forward to these being more widely available.
Best,
Re:Not suitable for mass production (Score:4, Informative)
Concrete is way more expensive than wood. Way more. Why?
Well, you still have to frame the entire inside of the house, and insulate, the roof has to be there, so you're only replacing the 2x6 walls with interior framing. And you still need to exterior clad the walls on something, and you still need to insulate.
So is concrete cheaper than a bunch of 2x6 or 2x8 load bearing walls? No.
I agree it's better though.
Re:Not suitable for mass production (Score:4, Interesting)
Solid concrete is more expensive, but foamed aircrete that has the density of hardwood or pine has long been a standard, approved building material in Europe and alleviates your concerns. Plus, it's insulative.
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed - and the combination of a 3D printed solid concrete shell filled with aircrete for stiffening and insulation has some real potential. You could probably even do both simultaneously - print a foot of shell, fill with aircrete, and print the next foot of shell while the aircrete dries enough to pour the next layer.
Re: (Score:2)
How are the walls reinforced for earthquake protection? Not mentioned in the fluffy web site. Somehow, I expect that standard rebar doesn't work with 3D printing.
Then, concrete is one of the worst materials to use from a GHG perspective. There are some things that have to be concrete in most cases, like foundations. But if you have the option to build the structure from wood that would be at least potentially carbon-neutral or close to it. Concrete by its nature produces large amounts of CO2 in the manufact
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>How are the walls reinforced for earthquake protection? Not mentioned in the fluffy web site. Somehow, I expect that standard rebar doesn't work with 3D printing.
I would imagine the most robust method would be to stop thinking of the 3D printed portion as the wall - instead think of it as a casting form that also doubles as permanent structural and weather cladding. As/after the form is printed, install rebar and pour the aircrete as the "real" part of the wall. Aircrete is quite strong enough for a 1-
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That information is a bit dated:
https://fizzano.com/blog/new-s... [fizzano.com]
Have you priced out traditional wood building materials lately? Prices are through the roof. Concrete prices, on the other hand, are about half of what they were in 2018.
Best,
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It looks like they are talking about large commercial buildings.
Insurance quotes were obtained for builder’s risk insurance and commercial property insurance based on a 100,000 square-foot, 4-story apartment building comprising 8 two-bedroom and 14 one-bedroom apartments per floor.
There is a paragraph after that that links to a PDF that is a dead link. (I tried the wayback machine too) so if that part applies to single-family home construction I can't tell.
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>Well, you still have to frame the entire inside of the house
Why? You probably want to plaster over the rough surface so it looks nicer, but there's no need for any framing so long as you integrate channels for plumbing and wiring within the walls. In fact, framing would eliminate one of the biggest strengths of 3D printing - the ability to make walls any shape you want. Modern houses are rectilinear because that's considerably cheaper to build with pre-fab rectilinear components like dimensional lumbe
Re:Not suitable for mass production (Score:4, Insightful)
Wood-framed houses are typical in the US, not so much in NW Europe for example.
There's several variations on 'modular home':
- one module is an entire room
- one module is a wall
- one module is a segment of a wall
All have different tradeoffs for flexibility vs. cost and time required to finish construction at the building site.
This printed home is an empty shell and would require e.g. insulation on the exterior walls and floors. Prefab walls allow you to do this in the factory.
The question is, how sustainable is concrete, vs. wood or brick?
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The US has many variations on 'modular' or prebuilt homes. Sears used to sell premade kits that were shipped to your build site by railway. There are many of these structures still standing today.
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"Modular Home" long meant "mobile home on a foundation." The construction processes are very similar. The cheapness of everything done that way also gave them a bad name.
"Modular" now means building actual modules, more by room than by building segment. That's more expensive than the original, but less so than building it on-site from sticks.
Then you can move down toward "kits" like Sears used to sell. Modernized versions exist. Basically large wall segments come on trucks and are set up once the site and f
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They're not replacing injection moulding. They're replacing hand crafting. People don't like prefabs, and they're not widespread. Residential construction is hugely expensive and hasn't really improved much in decades.
Re:Not suitable for mass production (Score:5, Interesting)
People don't like prefabs because to them, a prefab house brings up a trailer park and houses that are basically 8 to 10 feet wide by 30-50 feet long.
Modern prefab housing consists of multiple modules and often look like stick build (traditional build on site) housing. Except that instead of taking a few months to build, it's ready in 2 weeks and a day or two of installation. In that two weeks the site is prepared - the basement and foundation is laid down and built.
And yes, you can have your huge cathedral ceilings, huge rooms (a room may spam multiple modules) and every modern amenity you'd want in your house. And yes, multiple floors with staircases.
A small house can consist of as small as 3 modules, larger houses and involve 4 of 5 modules, and unless you knew, you wouldn't guess it was prefab. It's really modular homes.
If you want even more customization, you can involve a small bit of custom stick-build fabrication after the modules are installed .But you basically can go from an bare site to a ready to occupy home on the inside of a month - two weeks to for the factory to make the house, a week to ship it, a day or two to install it and finish it (seal the gaps).
The reason it's so quick is the trades are all on site - the factory works full time, so the trades are full time employees working full shifts. The lumber is framed and the drywallers are right there installing the drywall, then the electricians, plumbers, etc are working on it the next day. Within a few days the walls are taped and painted and flooring laid down and the finishes are applied. It's a rather remarkable process.
There was a TV show a few years back that featured prefab homes and they looked just like all the other stick-built houses on the street. The only difference was one day there was an empty site with a basement dug out, and the next day a house appeared.
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Modern prefab housing consists of multiple modules and often look like stick build (traditional build on site) housing.
Yes, and modern pre-fab housing is also no where near as cheap or easy as traditional pre-fab. It's important to remember the difference. You get the choice of:
1. Clone house.
2. Built by robot house.
3. Expensive house.
The choice isn't binary, you can combine elements of the three but make no mistake you're moving between them constantly.
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I haven't been in a lot of prefab homes, and I would wager there is a wide variety in the quality of products available. That said my parents owned a prefab home and it had a very cheap feel to it. Everything structural felt like it had more give to it than I would expect. Exterior doors shook whole walls when closed, and even the extremely light weight interior doors felt like they moved the wall when you closed them firmly. The floors all had a good bit of flex in them, enough that I could notice the diff
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My grandparents got a prefab when they retired from ranching. They kept a small bit of land and put the house there. Essentially take two modules, each similar to a mobile home in width, and put them side by side and it's a full size two bedroom home, with room to invite tons of people over for thanksgiving. Add a full length deck and prefab steel garage, and it was a very nice home.
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I'd say it depends on the prefab. House kits have been popular for decades. You are somewhat right about residential construction, however the actual labor costs are pretty flat, the big costs are in the fact it is exceedingly difficult to just go out and buy a piece of land ready to build on. Most residential is tied up into developments with layers upon layers of contractors, architects, engineers and shareholders, that add more and more cost to each home, even as they end up producing dozens if not hun
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It depends where the land is. I've been pricing things out here. Averages for detached residential construction is $118 - $189 per square foot. So about $240k on the low end. If you're in a major city the lot to put that on is easily going to run at twice that. If you're in the country, it might be less than a quarter. Rough estimates put the actual construction cost from more than 3/4 down to maybe 1/4 unless you get silly.
Yes, labour costs are the problem. That's why I said it's 3d printing versus hand ca
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Prefabs can be nice if you get a high end one. There are companies in Germany that do them, you can choose from a variety of layouts and then customize stuff like the location of power sockets and type of windows. The resulting building does not look cheap or even pre-fabricated.
In Japan they do something similar but with steel frames. Again the quality is excellent.
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There are plenty of nice pre-fab options in the states as well. They are finally gaining some traction especially in the north east where energy efficiency is most precious because heating costs are already high and finer tolerances mean not just a more efficient home but a more comfortable one.
The big hurdle in the US is that as another poster pointed out a lot people have a preconceived notion of what factory built housing is. They think it means a trailer. Where as what it really means today is things l
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The search issue is real, especially in a state like California where the seller Must Disclose Everything. If a house is modular or "manufactured" even in part that must be disclosed, and will result in difficulty selling.
At least the issues with building codes and modular are more or less over with, but some places still try to make it difficult.
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Right and that is why I blame the reality industry. They need to educate secondary market consumers. These agents need to say:
"Don't worry I am not taking you to see some ratty double wide. You'll like this. You'd never know its a manufactured home standing outside or in until you cut into a wall or something. All you going to do different is marvel at how perfect every surface is when you put a level or hold plumb line against it, and remark how nice a warm you are every winter and how there are no drafts
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"People don't like prefabs, "
They got used to prefab cars in the last 20ies, they'll get used to prefab homes in these 20ies.
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Lol. "You're holding it wrong."
Re: Not suitable for mass production (Score:2)
In my area of Pennsylvania framing is made in a factory, trucked to the site, and assembled on a foundation. They do this with walls and roof trusses. The frame goes up, then the walls and roof deck/roof go on, then siding, then internal finishing. My house which was built in 1940 used hardwood tongue and groove for the roof deck. Up until recently plywood was the standard and now OSB is the standard. OSB isnâ(TM)t good for wet areas because the binding material swells when wet itâ(TM)s just chea
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All depends on scale and how much of this will go unassisted.
Injection moulding followed by manual assembly of the pieces isn't cheaper than fully automated production, even if parts of it are just the "inferior" 3D printing. If the house could be built through 2 hours of manual set-up and material delivery, 80 hours of robot run-time (with one person supervising 40 robots, remotely), then 2 hours of manual clean-up, they have a chance to compete with prefab, which still needs to be assembled manually, then
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Not all prefabricated structures are the same. Modern conventionally-built homes alraady use some prefabricated parts, the ceiling trusses and floor trusses are typically engineer's-stamped prefabricated parts that are built in factories and delivered to the jobsite. Sometimes a builder and architect will design based on off-the-shelf parts, sometimes they'll call for a new design that may or may not end up in a truss manufacturer's catalog thereafter. Same goes for windows, window fitting companies are
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Two words:
Plastered walls
You can print the internal walls along with the external ones, and plastering is likely to be faster and cheaper than framing and installing drywall. In fact I would expect a plastering robot to be developed in the not-too-distant future.
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"You can print the internal walls along with the external ones, and plastering is likely to be faster and cheaper than framing and installing drywall. In fact I would expect a plastering robot to be developed in the not-too-distant future."
Why stop at that? Once the resolution goes up, one could print furniture, bathtub, toilet... perhaps even decorate the inner walls, artwork....
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Concrete furniture is heavy, so it's pretty much built-in wherever you put it. There are places that can work (bathtubs are a good example), but for the most there's an awful lot to be said for being able to rearrange the furniture - especially when someone new buys it.
A plastering robot would be a very different thing that a wall-printing robot - yeah, you've got to get the plaster up there, but then it becomes a trowling job to give the surface a nice smooth, even finish. You don't need high resolution
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"Concrete furniture is heavy, so it's pretty much built-in wherever you put it. There are places that can work (bathtubs are a good example), but for the most there's an awful lot to be said for being able to rearrange the furniture - especially when someone new buys it."
The new owner just shredders it and prints a new one.
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While this technology could be useful for bespoke (i.e. luxury) designed homes, it doesn't really make sense for low cost housing. It's bit like the idea that we will replace injection moulding machines with 3D printers. It doesn't make sense because injection moulding is dirt cheap if you are making large quantities.
Define cheap. As long as society is letting people go homeless and saying we can't afford to house them, isn't there something to shoot for? Not that it's not outrageously expensive; as is, Salt Lake City found it was cheaper to pay rent for an apartment for homeless people and give them a chance to get on their feet, than to criminalize them and constantly feed them through police custody, courts, and jails for, say, sleeping on a bench.
We can and should build decent homes in bulk. We should give people
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Earthbag, etc. construction is very labor intensive. They're a nice option for building with cheap materials if you have little money and lots of time to do the work yourself - but if you pay the laborers a decent wage it gets really expensive. And unfortunately a lot of those potential benefits rely on doing the job properly - meaning that neither DIY nor cheap-labor options are going to deliver them well.
3D printing alone leaves much to be desired - but take a double-wall 3D printed shell, insert rebar,
Re: Not suitable for mass production (Score:3)
We donâ(TM)t need to 3D print houses for people to solve homelessness. We are soon to have a surplus of available empty space in the form of office buildings due to companies switching to remote work and reducing overhead.
Homelessness is a more comprehensive issue than saying by build more housing, tho thatâ(TM)s part of it. Some homeless are so because of cost. Others because they canâ(TM)t find work. Many have substance abuse problems and mental health problems and they canâ(TM)t stay
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I think "letting people go homeless" is a bit of a stretch.
In many cases, homelessness isn't about giving people a home, or throwing money at them so they can afford one.
Yet they have an ever-expanding homelessness problem.
While homelessness CAN be a financial problem. In many cases, it's a mental health and poor life skills problem.
Quoting an organization that has actually done their homework on this topic:
"Our model consistently indicates that within CoCs, changes in household median rental prices and homelessness rate estimates were statistically
significantly related over our period of analysis. Specifically, a $100 increase in median rental price was associated with about a 9 percent increase in the estimated homelessness rate. For instance, in a CoC with a homelessness rate of 16 individuals per 10,000, a $100 increase in househol
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Re: Not suitable for mass production (Score:2)
Injection molding ... you may 3D print the cast. Or rather the shape that creates an empty space for your molten metal to flow into, to make the cast.
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While this technology could be useful for bespoke (i.e. luxury) designed homes, it doesn't really make sense for low cost housing.
This article shows it used for low cost housing
https://www.wbur.org/hereandno... [wbur.org]
Think in terms of labor (Score:2)
You've seen this in Europe with how they grow food. Several European countries lost their influx of refugees used as pickers. They changed up their farming (doing stuff like growing food in raised rows or building advanced machines) to reduce labor costs when they didn't have a workforce that cost almost nothing.
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While this technology could be useful for bespoke (i.e. luxury) designed homes, it doesn't really make sense for low cost housing.
Other way around. Poor people might be persuaded to move into a structure that looks like squeezed toothpaste. But as a master carpenter who specializes on one-off houses says, "The money is in the finish."
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I watch a lot of those prefabricated factory built homes going up on home building shows and it's always like "8 hours later our house is built!" and then they spend another 12 months finishing the interior and siding and glazing and...
I suspect this 3D printed house is similarly super fast to frame and then just as slow to run plumbing, electric, drywall, side etc.
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You asked...
https://moladi.blogspot.com/20... [blogspot.com]
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The process is deliberately designed to be labour intensive to boost local employment and local production without requiring prior construction experience or skills. The moladi construction process mostly uses local supplies apart from the reusable formwork and a special additive to aerate the mortar (concrete without stone) to reduce the density, thereby enhancing the thermal properties of the structure.
That's very cool. I wonder how it competes on cost with this robot.
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True, but forms and an aerating cement mixer are going to have a much lower initial investment. I suspect that long term the robot would be the better value, **but** the forms are going to allow the builder to expand much faster. If I were somewhere that unskilled labor was cheap and available I'd definitely go the forms route, but for the US and Europe the robot would probably get my money.
Nice try (Score:2)
"I want people to not be afraid of automation...it is just a different tool and different method. But it's still the same product; we are still building a house at the end of the day," Andersen says.
So... why does it look like shit then?
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All it's really missing is a facade on the outside to replace the almost stucco appearance of the huge print layer heights. The inside of the house is normal drywall and flooring construction. It wouldn't be too much more effort than was already spent cleaning that up although this house is almost certainly going to someone who is buying it because it's a 3d printed house so they wouldn't exactly mind layer heights.
Even if it couldn't be fixed, a whole lot of people would jump on the opportunity. Hell, here
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Interesting)
There's always ICF, which to me is far better than this, and really just as quick to build.
It comes with insulation attached, and already has interior points to attach drywall/cabinets/etc over the insulation layer.
This product requires attaching interior and exterior insulation after the fact, and creating interior attach points, or building an interior frame, to put drywall on the inside. So ICF does all that, which negates the day or so it takes to assemble the "blocks" for the pour. And once the pour starts, it should be faster than a 3D robot laying down layer after layer.
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Have to say, completely agree, there are much better ways to improve the construction time at least. This really seems like an optimization for human labor cost during framing at the expense of other optimizations that can be done with ICF like the insulation and attachment points for internal and external coverings. Real cost for home construction is kind of that balance between an assembly line's ability to mass produce identical objects vs homeowner's ability to customize and at least right now this tech
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ICF is interesting stuff - I have a feeling it's going to loose out to 3D printing though - consider: You can print a double wall and pour foamed aircrete in the space between them. Insulation plus greatly increased strength encased inside a solid concrete shell that doesn't need any additional cladding inside or out.
Aircrete can be pretty strong stuff even on its own, so you could potentially print quite thin solid walls for the form, just enough to contain a foot of aircrete while it sets - you could ev
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Two pours? No.
Both processes are somewhat similar to begin:
First you build a casting form - either assembling the ICF panels, or printing the concrete shell.
Then you pour - structural concrete for the ICF, aircrete structural insulation for the print (or some other insulation, doesn't *have* to be cast)
At that point the 3D printed walls are done aside from cosmetic finishing, while the ICF still need to be clad.
Drywall became popular because lathe-and-plaster construction is a lot more expensive. Applyin
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I don't think this home would meet the earthquake-resistance standards in much of California as it appears to be comprised of unreinforced concrete.
Re: Nice try (Score:2)
China?
That place where whole houses are just toppling over?
Where the steel is still a complete joke?
If they claim something, I wouldn't believe *shit*.
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Well that is a blast from the past.
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Re: Nice try (Score:2)
He lives in a cave, and tries to justify his decision to not have to admit how he failed. ;)
Same thing as when people fall for iDevices. :)
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My HOA cares. Just try to change the color scheme without their permission.
bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)
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If the robot could lay the infrastructure as it builds, it would be quite revolutionary. If it just erects walls - meh.
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Depends on the construction method. If it's a brick building then it takes a lot of time and skilled labour to construct the shell.
The type of construction depends on the location. Sometimes it has to be one type due to local conditions, sometimes it just needs to fit in with existing architecture.
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Does modern building ever go brick-by-brick anymore? I thought they shipped factory pre-assembled brick walls.
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I've seen brickies at work around here... Then again the new housing market is badly screwed up in the UK so logic probably plays little part in the selection of construction methods.
Concrete Housing (Score:2)
Re: Concrete Housing (Score:4)
Where is the rebar? Straight layered concrete is not all that strong to lateral forces IIRC
Re: Concrete Housing (Score:2)
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Re: Concrete Housing (Score:2)
Concrete with rebar only lasts 30 years before the rust gets it, in the breathing gaps and cracks where the water can enter, as things expand and contract at different rates.
Try proper bricks. Can't go wrong with bricks. They will last almost literally forever.
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You're thinking of concrete in roadways and bridges.
In something like an ICF home, this isn't the case.
You build homes with things like vapor barriers and water control layers to avoid this sort of thing.
And you're not throwing down megatons of sodium chloride on it every time it snows.
As for "proper bricks". No. Too much variability in brick quality. Which is why it's primarily doing most of its business as a veneer for homes today.
Bricks are generally too porous, making them susceptible to moisture tra
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Yes, a totally automated brick-laying robot the size of the printer that built that house would be amazing. You could bring the price of a brick house down to at least parity with a stick-built shitbox. I imagine you could make it do curves without to much extra effort. And adding the ability to do designwork (that doesn't involve rotating the bricks vertically at all, anyway) would be an easy value add... like:
https://www.alamy.com/stock-ph... [alamy.com]
Here's a partial solution, but a worker has to follow up and cle
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Hard to see how this could work in the US.... (Score:2)
Re: Hard to see how this could work in the US.... (Score:2)
Uum, parametrization?
Higher order functions/machines? (Let the parameters *be* machines (with their own parameters.)
We can ramp this up all the way to monad transformers over algebraix data types.
I thought Slashdot was a place for geeks and programmers...
Caveat emptor (Score:2)
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PLA does not dissolve in water. Perhaps you meant PVA?
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BLTouch?? (Score:3)
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Fuck concrete. (Score:2)
Especially concrete with rebar.
It makes the guy with the hammer drill, five floors away from you, sound like he's right the other side of the wall.
And steel and concrete expand and contract differently with heat and cold, causing gaps in-between, where water can enter, rust the steel, and ruin the entire thing. This is exactly why that stuff usually doesn't last more than 30 years before it becomes an invisible danger.
Meanwhile, brick walls from Roman times are still standing in my city, and if they got a l
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It sure exists. Search for "bricklaying robot".
Prebuilt homes (Score:2)
This has already been done better. In the US, concrete is expensive, but I grew up in Greece where concrete concrete & bricks are the preferred building materials anyway for the price and characteristics, so prebuilt homes are a popular choice. Unlike 3D printing, they are can be mass produced, they are structurally stronger (it's a seismically active country, so the walls are reinforced concrete with an anti-seismic design), and when they probably set up faster than 3D printing - after the foundation i
Stephen King might disagree (Score:3)
"I want people to not be afraid of automation...it is just a different tool and different method. But it's still the same product; we are still building a house at the end of the day," says Kirk Andersen
Stephen King: Challenge Accepted!
Cheaper housing? (Score:2)
Fast construction techniques already exist. For example insulated concrete formwork lets you build a house with LEGO like polystyrene blocks that you pour concrete between.
"Premier agent" just means... (Score:2)
Resale value? (Score:2)
Stupid fad (Score:2)
There's no real need for 3D printed houses, it's just a fad built on the 3D printing fad.
Opinion (Score:2)
Doesn't beat ICF (Score:2)
ICF produces structures with integral, efficient insulation using conventional concrete pumps which are readily available with no investment in a "CNC concrete layering system" (nothing is "printed") that sits idle between highly specialized jobs.
Another argument for UBI (Score:2)
Unless anyone here is really going to argue that this will seriously wipe out jobs for folks with no college?
Letâ(TM)s throw more people out of jobs (Score:2)
That will support social stability!
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3D printers did change the game... for people who like to invent and make things.
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All those 3D printing rigs are busy making guns.
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