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Printer Technology

The World's First Village of Affordable 3D-Printed Homes Is Now Complete (dwell.com) 102

Posted by BeauHD from the first-of-its-kind dept.
MikeChino shares a report from Dwell: In Tabasco, Mexico, a family living below the poverty line recently visited their future home: a 3D-printed, 500-square foot structure with two bedrooms, one bath, a wraparound cement patio, and an awning over the front porch. It's one of two fully furnished homes -- printed in about 24 hours and finished by local nonprofit ECHALE -- that will soon make up a larger community of 50 dwellings with green spaces, parks, amenities, and basic utilities. Tabasco is a seismic zone, so the homes were engineered beyond standard safety requirements -- and they'll endure for generations. "Icon's printer, called the Vulcan II, isn't the first designed to build an entire house," notes Fast Company. "But the new Mexican neighborhood, which will have 50 of the homes, will be the first community to use this type of technology at scale."

New Story, the nonprofit leading the project, has posted a video about the homes on their YouTube channel.
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The World's First Village of Affordable 3D-Printed Homes Is Now Complete More

The World's First Village of Affordable 3D-Printed Homes Is Now Complete

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  • So the house looks nice.

    However, haven't we learned in the US over the past 70 years that building massive tracts of houses from essentially the same plans/materials is, well, terrible?

    I guess it's easy enough to vary the overall design if it's being printed, but I imagine it's still going to be very clearly all the same thing, and not necessarily in a good way.

    • I don't see a problem with tract housing besides the minor nuisance of finding a house when they all look the same.
      • Wouldn't all of the houses looking the same be a benefit because it removes the ability to waste time worrying about something that isn't that important. That's why Steve Jobs famously wore the same thing every day. He found something that worked for him and then removed any chance he had to worry about it.

        If you're horribly impoverished does it really matter what the house looks like if the difference is sleeping on the street or in a makeshift shanty made with pallets and tarps?

        • If you're trying to find a buddies house (Score:5, Insightful)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @10:25PM (#59511098)
          in one of these communities it's a pain in the neck the first few times. There are no land marks, everything really does look the same.

          But yeah, that's a first world problem right there.

      • I don't see a problem with tract housing besides the minor nuisance of finding a house when they all look the same.

        Why can't the 3-D printer be fed several different house plans with the same or similar cost, and make for a better looking neighborhood?
        BTW, my guess is that, once they get quality, design, and livability to a certain point, and housing authority approval, people will flock to buy 3D-printed dwellings - they'll be the best bang for the buck by far.

        • Why can't the 3-D printer be fed several different house plans with the same or similar cost, and make for a better looking neighborhood?

          Obviously they can be and rest assured they will be.

          So far, no one seems to have mentioned any real obstacles, much less insurmountable ones... so I'll mention one: there are 'interests' that are rather heavily-dependent on ensuring artificial scarcity; they don't/won't like this shit.

        • Why can't the 3-D printer be fed several different house plans with the same or similar cost, and make for a better looking neighborhood?

          A lack of creativity from the engineers involved.

      • Everyone could be fed more efficiently on rice blended with vegetable fats and vitamin palpitate.
        It's horrible for the same reason, one size doesn't fit all, nor should it. beauty and personal expression , indivuality vs mass scale production.
        the individual loses out. Humanity loses out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        In practive, in tract housing, the makers cut corners. With bespoke housing, any corners cut are more obvious. I bought in a development where they built them all at once, and the first 2 were great, the remaining 98 all had corners cut, to where they had constant problems. They sold them new for $250k each. I bought mine for $80k, and it was the nicer 3 bed version, 5 years old. The head of the HOA was a little Hitler, who retired, bought a $250k house, and can't afford to move because he can't sell i

    • but.. but.. but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thesupraman ( 179040 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @10:03PM (#59511044)

      'Affordable' is the key, its a lot better than a trailer park, and yes they dont look but, HOWEVER.

      1 - The inside texture of the walls is going to be a cleaning NIGHTMARE, and it would have been SO easy to plaster them flat. Completely impractical, but 'oh we wanted the photoshoot to look 3d printed!'

      2 - and while we are on looks - why oh WHY do they have to give us lots of pretty shots with the interior full of fancy designer furniture and accessories... Or do the people doing this not actually understand their target audience?

      3 - It looks like a good solid 50-60% of the walls are '3d printed', but not the window surrounds, roof interface, etc.. Flat (on or off site) precasting and on site assembly would almost certainly have been cheaper, faster, and probably given a better outcome.

      So, this smells a LOT like yet another 'look, tech is great for those unwashed poor people!' BS puff pieces, rather than an actual solution to a problem.
      I'm sure SOMEONE is making a nice pile of money out of this, but I doubt they will ever live anywhere near one of these.
      Cheap modular design cement housing is already a solved problem..

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

        I think the target audience are either not in homes or in homes that are already very difficult to clean. They may be coming from substandard houses made with tarps, plywood, corrugated tin, etc. Part of the benefit of this method is that the extra cost of adding drywall, sheetrock, or plastering isn't needed. It may not be the home you want, but if you have the money then you can add on your plastering. This style would also work well for garages and sheds.

        Cheap modular cement housing is often very lousy

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          I think the target audience is the rich donors they hope will fund these communities, people who would be turned off by seeing the houses they're expected to pay for with ramshackle mismatched furniture.

        • Part of the benefit of this method is that the extra cost of adding... plastering

          "Emerson big savings, Byatch!"

          They would be appear to be overthinking (i.e. underthinking) certain details...

      • Re:but.. but.. but.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian@bixby.gmail@com> on Thursday December 12, 2019 @07:49AM (#59511914)

        I think it's the material that gives the interior walls that texture, it has to harden quickly enough that it doesn't slump.

        Have you ever been in a brick or concrete block house? Those walls look considerably worse when new. The new residents will almost certainly buy plaster and finish them, if they had built a house of bricks/blocks they would have expected to do the same thing after they moved in.

        People in most of the rest of the world don't expect to have a house handed to them on a platter, rather they expect to have to work on their own homes to improve them. You're just spoiled.

      • The slurry squirt machine has to placed around the floor plan of each house in turn, which is not scalable. The slurry has to be formulated and mixed on site close to the squirter.

        Labour is cheap where these houses are being built.

        Much simpler to mould complex interlocking blocks that construct a small house without mortar.

      • Agreed that it's a puff piece, because "3d print" is trendy. As with all such articles, the title is a lie - only part of the house was printed. Add the cost of getting the specialized gear to the location and setting it up, along with the specialized material.

        Note that the roof is flat. Disaster when it rains.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Like the projects but spread out?
      The projects in the USA had green spaces, parks, amenities too...
      After decades of city planning, housing waiting for people to be added...
      Lets try massive tracts again... might work this time :)

    • Re:Nice place, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @11:29PM (#59511246) Journal

      ??? Here in Florida, virtually every home I see built is in a massive tract of houses that are all essentially the same whether the community is a low-end one or a community of million dollar homes. Almost every community even has an HOA in place to force the homeowners to keep the homes the same for all time.

      So, what makes you think we've learned this is a "terrible" idea? It seems we've learned that it is the only way to offer more for the money. The operations building communities like this are usually highly organized with multiple crews to perform each major stage of construction. Each crew can then learn to do its job in highly optimized ways. A McMansion can be taken from a pad to fully framed by a 3-man crew in three days, and roofed in another.

      This is just a method of construction. The houses produced can have far more variation in architecture than a framed house. Is every framed house the same?

    • Re:Nice place, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday December 12, 2019 @05:44AM (#59511756) Homepage

      Developer: "We've developed this amazing 3d home printer! You can make homes in any shape imaginable! Every single building can be a unique work of art!"

      Operator: "That's great, thanks! Now we're going to use it to print a bunch of identical boxes."

      Developer: ".... You're kidding, right?"

    • While uniformity of houses is a bit mind numbing, I'm more worried about the fact that the "3D printed" house has electricity conduits on the outside of the walls.
      Both inside and the outside of the house.

      Sure, you can bury those later when plastering but still... not very 3D. Or safe.
      Or easy to fix later. We're talking hardened concrete here. Putting up a painting will require heavy drilling.
      Also, those rounded corners are a fucking idiotic waste of space.

      On a positive side...
      You can bet your sweet ass peop

      • Or safe.

        What's unsafe about electrical conduit outside the walls? The building I work in has all of it's conduit attached to the concrete block that makes up the walls. It's 100% to code and 100% safe.
    • House you can afford that looks the same as all the other houses in that neighborhood.
      vs
      The houses are all different, but you can't afford those houses and so remain homeless.

      Not exactly a hard choice for most people.

  • Sounds affordable until... (Score:5, Funny)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @09:37PM (#59510996)
    You put all fresh printer cartridges in and after the nozzles finish cleaning you only have 2/3 of the mortar toner left....
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Feel-good news with no substance. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @10:33PM (#59511114)

    "The cost of building the homes was not disclosed, but New Story sees the finished dwellings as a leap in the right direction. "

    Okay, so it is too expensive to disclose then.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 )

      It would have been much, much cheaper, but unfortunately all of the tradesmen needed for these projects had already moved north. There's probably more Mexicans building houses in the US than in Mexico at this point.

    • Re:Feel-good news with no substance. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday December 12, 2019 @04:34AM (#59511668) Homepage Journal

      Companies don't usually disclose the cost of prototypes, it's a trade secret that could be of use to their competitors. "This is how much it costs to replicate our technology" essentially.

      The fact that it's even possible is a great sign.

    • I'd guess definitely more expensive than just paying these people the $3 a day they're making now to build it themselves. Which would have the added bonus of pumping the money into the local community instead of funneling it to VCs.

    • https://www.3dprintingmedia.ne... [www.3dprin...ia.network]

      Last year, ICON grabbed the attention of media platforms all over the world for a house it 3D printed in 24 hours and which cost just $4,000 to make. The house, which was unveiled in March 2018, was the result of a collaboration with non-profit organization New Story and promised the world that affordable, rapidly deployed housing could soon become a reality.

      • a house it 3D printed in 24 hours and which cost just $4,000 to make.

        That's for the concrete shell wall.
        Everything else - including the roof, flooring, plumbing, electrical etc. - is extra.

  • First wold solution. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by msauve ( 701917 ) on Thursday December 12, 2019 @12:04AM (#59511312)
    So, if you don't have shelter, instead of cutting local flora and building one, it's somehow better to first acquire a 3D printer and the required associated artificial materials, power it up with the power source you don't have, control it with the computer you don't have, and build a structure you won't be able to maintain.

    (Sorry that the 1st world f'cked you, they were only trying to satisfy their conscience)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      But philanthropy and 3D printer... good.
      Cutting local flora and building one.. removes the ability to do philanthropy and be seen with the 3D printer... bad.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      This will be useful where you don't have access to the skilled labour needed to turn local flora into houses, or don't have access to the tools and equipment or the other materials needed. You could drop in a cargo container with printer and filament and make a bunch of houses fairly quickly.

      It could also reduce the cost of building houses dramatically by cutting out the skilled labour and many of the different materials needed.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        ...because delivering a container and teaching someone to run a high-tech 3d printer is easier than showing them how to make mud-straw bricks. OK.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Why do you think you see refugee camps full of tents if it's so easy to just grab some mud and straw from somewhere and make a house?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by msauve ( 701917 )
            I see your confusion. You don't know the difference between a home and a refugee shelter.

        • Re:First wold solution. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian@bixby.gmail@com> on Thursday December 12, 2019 @08:06AM (#59511936)

          It's glaringly obvious you've never seen how much work and material goes into making adobe. Making adobe bricks is a specialty, most people in the Third World don't make their own they buy them pre-made or pay someone to make them on-site. This is going to be especially true in the areas where the poor live, since their plots of land are too small to make the adobes on, much less to let them sit out and dry, or even to have them stacked and curing (they can't be transported more than a few meters until they've cured at least a month).

          In short, yeah, delivering a container and teaching someone to run a high-tech 3d printer is a fuck of a lot cheaper and easier than showing them how to make adobes.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Shotgun ( 30919 )

            It's cheaper to just deliver the container.

            Because you'll also need a few truckloads of cement.
            A single truckload of cinder blocks would be cheaper still.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              Tabasco is an earthquake zone you'd need to deliver rebar and have someone who knows how to place and build reinforced columns.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )
          The "high-tech 3d printer" is a concrete mixer, with a plotter-like system for printing. Concrete in, houses out. It isn't any more "high tech" than a 50 year old HP plotter. The floorplans are pre-programmed, and can be altered through "high tech" programming, but that's not required.

          You pour a foundation, then set up the printer on top, then it prints the house on the foundation. Yes, that requires more skill than a mud hut, but no more than a Quonset hut. So long as nothing breaks.

    • No one is buying a 3d printer to print one house, that would be silly, they are contracting a builder with a 3d printer to build a house.

      Granted any community poor enough wouldn't be able to afford it.

  • It's weird (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Thursday December 12, 2019 @12:40AM (#59511392) Homepage Journal

    I assumed in very poor areas it was a shortage of materials and tools, rather than a shortage of labor. If we sent a whole lot of concrete to Tabasco and some brick molds would they be able to build houses cheaper than a robot?

    • Re:It's weird (Score:4, Informative)

      by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian@bixby.gmail@com> on Thursday December 12, 2019 @08:09AM (#59511950)

      Probably, but then the first earthquake would reduce it to rubble. This has happened repeatedly in the area. Brick or block construction require columns and rebar, both of which are expensive and need a certain amount of expertise to place and install correctly.

    • Probably less a shortage of materials and tools and more a shortage of expertise. Anyone can slap a bunch of shit they found lying around to make a shelter passable for a few days or even a few weeks. With more time and energy one that will last a few months or even a year or two.

      The problem is that such a shelter isn't going to ride out a small storm, let alone an earthquake or a major storm.

      Puerto Rico is a great example of this. While most people have the resources to build/buy the traditional "concrete

  • Fucking clickbait (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Thursday December 12, 2019 @01:05AM (#59511432)

    Village of Affordable 3D-Printed Homes Is Now Complete

    It's one of two fully furnished homes

    2 homes is a village now? 2/50 is "complete"?

  • So.... a concrete (sorry, LAVAcrete) square home? How is this different from any other home in poor Mexican neighborhoods I’ve seen, other than all the money they spent to add on all the unaffordable, not 3D printed trimmings to make it look like it isn’t just another square concrete house? And my favorite part of the video was how they claimed the curved corners would IMPROVE AIRFLOW!!! What. The. Hell?

  • 3D printing excels in areas where you want to build complex, one-off shapes. House walls are not complex, nor are they typically one-offs. A framing team can have a wall up and weather-tight in a day. And if you want to get industrial about it, you can make wall panels in a factory and hoist them into place in an afternoon.

    Nor is this going to solve the affordable housing crises. The cause of expensive housing is not because it's hard and expensive to build walls (see above). We're plenty good at slapping u

    • I think a lot of the value here comes from the automation. As you say, a framing team can do a lot of this in one day... But that requires a framing team (and daylight).

      One of the reasons I love my 3D printer is not that it can produce parts that I couldn't otherwise produce... It's that it can go produce it while I'm off doing something else entirely. Could a house-building bot go and make a row of these houses in a few days with minimal oversight? Yeah, it could. Maybe not today, but I think that's where

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        My out of shape ass could build the walls of a house this size by myself in one day. It took me an hour to put together the walls for a 10x12 shed last weekend. Of course, it requires studs cut to length and a nail gun. I had put the floor in, including leveling the ground for the posts, the previous Sunday afternoon.

        These 'homes' have a huge amount of wasted concrete, which is very expensive for the purpose.

        • It's 500sq ft that's more like 20x25 your shed is 120sq ft and if it's a house (not a shed where the walls are just a frame and composite sheet) built on a wood frame it needs sheet rock, insulation, sheathing, moisture wrap, and siding I doubt you could build the walls of house this size by yourself in two weeks.

    • I've done considerable research into building a home vs purchasing a home vs prefab. The reason building a concrete structure is cheaper in the long run is that it requires less maintenance and is more efficient over time but the cost of time and labor makes it more expensive to build than a wood framed home. Even a wood frame home is 40% to 50% labor.

      Take out a good chunk of the time and labor involved and that would make it more affordable to build and still give you the other advantages.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      It will work for building lots in a small time. If an earthquake hit So Cal, and took out 1 M homes on similar plots of land, you simply pick a street, start at one end, build a foundation, set up the house printer. Then move to the next plot, build a foundation. Repeat. After each house is printed, a team finishes the house (curtains, lights, wiring), and the advance team builds foundations. The only thing close is an automated factory building pre-fab walls. But there's no flexibility on a pre-made

      • You can order a pre-fabricated house in any design that you want. They can come in sections with all of the wiring, plumbing, flooring, and and everything except the windows and roof installed. The windows would break during the transportation. All you have to do is set up the utilities, build the foundation, get the company building the house to install the sections, install the windows and install the roof. You have other things like decorating to do but your house is pretty much ready to to live in.

        You p

  • Two homes don't make a village and two popups on a website make it a rotten website.

  • You need an expensive 3D Concrete Printer. You need a consistent source of power. You need a large quantity of a very specific concrete. You need a specifically skilled team.

    Honestly, I'd guess that pre-fab panels from a factory would be both cheaper and quicker to erect. And it was noted that this was a seismically active area. Concrete construction is notably inelastic. . .

  • I would imagine that using simple, cheap, readily available concrete cinder blocks would be much cheaper and faster than using a technique like this. Structurally and functionally, I can't imagine there's be much of a difference between the two.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      Structurally and functionally, I can't imagine there's be much of a difference between the two.

      Apparently your imagination is lacking. Concrete cinder blocks are notorious for poor performance in earthquakes, requiring the addition of a lot of rebar and concrete, so why not go with concrete in the.first place.

      • Rebar was used in the 3D construction as well, so it doesn't offer an advantage over cinder blocks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        A lot of concrete you say? Does it need the concrete to be a foot wide across the entire wall? Because that's what you've got here. A bunker with 1ft thick, rebar filled concrete walls.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      Cinderblocks are surprisingly weak in many applications. They are also heavy and hard to move, at least as hard as a single large machine and a bunch of concrete mix to run it.
  • This isn't a 3D printed house. This is a 3D printed concrete wall. You automated pouring concrete, which is what percent of the cost of a house? Plus the carbon emissions are probably excessive.
  • Wow 24hrs to build it....spread of several Days. How is that faster than cinder blocks?

  • I see the photos - but what puzzles me is:
    1. I see not sink or feature for water access in the kitchen. Presumably they have electricity and gas for the refrigerator and stove.
    2. I see no photo of the advertised bathroom. If there is no access flowing water that might explain that.
    Will be interesting to see a follow up in a year or two.

  • Everybody has a homeless problem. Billions are thrown at the problem with no solution whatsoever. Build a whole community of these houses off in the hinterlands where land is cheap. Add essential services. Whatever is needed to keep the people who simply cannot take care of themselves from disturbing the taxpayers or harming themselves. Not a prison, an option. Leave if you want to, but you can't come back for a month and you go to the bottom of the waiting list if there is one. This has GOT to be ch

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