Print Your Own House
from the habitat-for-humanity-out-of-business? dept
Does Habitat for Humanity have some robotic competition? We've talked about 3D printers many times in the past, but this is a bit different. An article from New Scientist describes a new building robot that can "print" a house. As the article describes: "It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerized drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs." It doesn't necessarily need to be concrete either. They're looking into using other materials as well. The creator of the device is hoping that it will be able to build an entire 2,000 square-foot home in a single day with no human help. Even more interesting is that the robot may make it possible to do designs that were not easily done by humans - such as using "complex curving walls."
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
The fallout
Computers have thrown a lot of IT nerds out of work, but in coming decades other protected professions (construction, medicine) will feel the heat.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Outdated aesthetics
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
So, good progress, but it's not like it's going to disrupt the building industry all that much; even widespread use would shift construction's labor pool ever so slightly in skillset category.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
3-D plans.
Here’s how it works. All the plans are full to the brim with errors. ( I’m talking world famous architectural practices here ) The construction companies rely on the errors – because it’s them that sort them out on site – thus allowing them to up their charges considerably.
I once asked a multimillionaire London based property developer why he put up with such dross from the architects, he said
“ Well, they’re only plans dear boy “ in other words ‘ hopeful ideas’ rather than schematics.
Nine times out of ten times the plans are actually drawn up by ‘just out of college’ interns on peanut wages. If you feed the average Autocad or Microstation plans into a 3-D printer you’ll get a concrete splodge with some metal bits poking out.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
might be useful
Scarce human labor could then be applying their skills to the fit-out, or to more complex public-use buildings like hospitals, schools, etc.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Reinforcing?
And for that matter, how would the concrete dry fast enough such that by the time you get to the roof, the base could withstand the weight.
Seems like an idea some janitor came up with based on the paper 3d modeling news stories and decided to form his own company.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Reinforcing?
Maybe the robot huffs and puffs at it to get it to dry quickly.
Seriouly, it does sound like they are using load bearing walls which I thought went out decades ago( unless you consider log cabins)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]