The industry as a whole still has some kinks to work out.
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The video isn’t really about 3D printing houses, it’s mostly about corruption, scams, grifters, con artists, burocracy and idiots. It uses a very ominous tone that is very emotionally appealing and click-baity. What it has to say about actual 3D printing houses is very little:
One house had cracks, concrete is hard. 3D printing with clay takes a week to dry, that is soooo long. Concrete produces so much CO2!!! Where are the regulations!? But they also invented carbon neutral concrete and are experimenting with new binders and aggregates. They 3D printed a 2 story house in earthquakey japan, but OH MY GOD it’s inspired by a cave! I CAVE!!! Who wants to live in a CAVE?!?!?
A video like this is using the same type of emotional manipulation to feed the algorithm and engagement like the grifters in their example do. It’s disgusting to me.
3D printing houses has huge potential, it’s just in it’s infancy, and maybe not well suited to develop in the capitalist housing market. There are breakthroughs to control less precise robotics, self driving and SLAM that will allow this to be even cheaper and more flexible. Building materials to develop and software and tools to develop. Just look at plastic 3D printers and how they were held back for years by patents and capitalist interests.
The potential is there to not just 3D print rough structures, but intricately painted and sculpted beautiful structures… out of literal dirt on site. With new binders we could make use of local materials instead of transporting sand across the world. And not just one house, but a whole village for e.g. the millions of refugees from natural catastrophes we can expect over the next century.
There is an obvious potential for further automization, like have a robot dig holes and 3D print foundations, save on transportation costs, use new materials, circumvent long and exploitative industrial supply chains for building materials, print foam insulation. Have different “robot end effectors” to insert wiring and piping while printing, or place structural elements for roofing. Even a hybrid approach between 3D printing and brick laying could be useful. Scan a quarry of a million natural stones and puzzle them together.
Don’t just 3D print the framing, but finish and paint the walls too. And 3D print the kitchen and cabinet furniture and bathroom including shower and bathtub too. 3D printing the walls is just the beginning of the potential. And tearing down and systematically sorting and recycling all individual parts of a house at the other end of the lifecycle.
We should fund a whole university focused on this technological area as a mega project to solve housing once and for all through maximum automation. Making housing free and a universal right for everyone should be the goal.
This is a ridiculous comment from someone who prints too many Magic the Gathering characters.
This technology has been typical tech bullshit from day one. Wood framed houses are cheaper, stronger, and can be repaired or changed in the future. It starts with the assumption that the building costs are the limitation to affordable housing. Wrong.
Have a robot dig foundations? You mean like this?
The biggest fans of 3D printed houses have no idea how houses are built. A small crew can frame an entire house in the time it takes just to setup the 3D printer gantry.
This is a ridiculous comment from someone who prints too many Magic the Gathering characters.
Do you mean your own ridiculous comment? And what do you mean printing Magic the gathering characters, do you mean color printing the little card pictures in large? Or do you confuse this with 3D printing characters for tabletop strategy games like Warhammer 40k? I’m just going to assume you’re some kind of confused space ork.
This technology has been typical tech bullshit from day one. Wood framed houses are cheaper, stronger, and can be repaired or changed in the future.
Sure, robots are totally bullshit. They never have had any drastic effect how we live and work and if they did, it would surely stop at this specific point and go no further!
Have a robot dig foundations? You mean like this?
Yes, exactly like that! The advances I spoke of make it possible to control even hydraulic robot arms using software and computer vision. It’s all very technical though.
And they already can switch end effectors and are mobile and can drive around!!! You could in fact build a 3D house printing robot exactly like that and it would take very little setup time. Or have a small group of them work together, day and night digging, printing and building homes.
Yes, exactly like that!
that’s exactly how all house foundations have been built for 100 years. Visit a construction site, learn something.
Here’s a prefab housing complex from THE FUTURE…
That’s from 1967. They now cost $1.7M each.
It really feels like the wrong technology for the job.
What 3D printing is great at is having one machine, that can produce a billion different parts.
i.e. with my one printer, I can print hooks, or replacement parts that no longer exist or custom organizer that fit exactly my stuff and situation.
It’s fantastic for printing a massive variety of low volume parts / one offs.
It’s not great at printing those things cheaply, or in modular parts (it can be done but it’s often not because it’s a lot of extra effort for one offs). Which in housing, people want cheap (because it’s the most expensive thing they’ll buy), and they want it to be adaptable and changeable.
If anything I suspect an actual housing revolution could come from pre-fab housing, made of a highly customizable and modular component system, and slick design software, but no one has cracked all the pieces required to implement that yet.
My though is that they failed to understand concrete itself. Concrete works best as a monolith. Literally here, a single rock. As a laminate, it loses strength. From what I was reading, you can do concrete in multiple pours, but people were suggesting to ensure that the rebar stuck out enough between pours and then some other things like bonding adhesive and wetting the layers between pours.
I like the idea of automating the structure. Bricks can be laid as pick and place, and cement can be extruded. This creates a reverse centaur, IMO, where someone is watching the labor and becomes responsible for the quality.
The house is always going to need several different structures added: plumbing, electrical, insulation, HVAC, internal construction and facade, cabinetry, etc, etc, etc.
Being able to shit out as much of that as possible on the spot would save tons, but you still need electrical items whatever. 3D printing may not be the best solution for a house, but it might be a step to something better.
Prefab parts are actually very common here in West and North European homes. Complete prefab houses too, factory made, very well insulated, using heat pumps and underfloor heating, built in plumbing and electrical systems. They do not use bricks but a combination of wood, steel, insulation materials and cladding and are built for a lifespan of around 75-100 years.
Most new subdivisions are assembled on site from prefab components like roof trellises. Many new subdivisions use identical houses with walls and floors premade, just assembled on site, far cheaper than 3D printing.
Prefab houses are a thing here, too. I was still kicking around the idea of generating a house on site.
Americans have been buying single wide or double wide prefabs since WW2.
The tech has changed significant over the years as well, and that includes both modular, prefab, and mobile homes.
People have cracked modular construction. A lot of construction of modern buildings is pretty cookie cutter, especially if the architect is on board to using pre fabricated elements.
They can do pre-fabricated architecture, but they haven’t cracked it.
Current prefabricated construction (especially in the context of homes / housing) is still limited in terms of customization and/or requires a huge amount of manual architecture / engineering work, and the consumer facing customization software is still pretty garbage.
People still often use contractors because they want the level of customization they bring, even when off the shelf options are available.
Don’t get me wrong I have massive faith in prefab construction in terms of infrastructure projects like bridges and elevated guideways etc where you have a design team doing them all up front and sending them off to be made at a factory and assembled on site, but I haven’t seen anything in terms of home construction that seems revolutionary from prefab yet.
They can do pre-fabricated architecture, but they haven’t cracked it.
Most new mid price subdivisions are pre fabs assembled on site.
Before people get excited by 3D printing YouTube videos, they should really learn what the current state of house manufacturing is.
The big costs are not the structure, it’s the land and infrastructure, utilities, sewers, roads, etc.
That sucks, I had hoped this would work better as it seemed very efficient/quick. I don’t think this is damning of all pre fab homes though, as they are really common especially in Europe.
They are not common.
I had hoped this would work better as it seemed very efficient/quick
Maybe on Youtube. This was a scam from the start, they were neither faster nor cheaper to build. Bonus: impossible to repair or make changes.
Sounded like a cool idea at the time, at least they tried something new!
yeah its good its tried and evaluated. It could be improved to work out or not.
I always thought as a kid that modular construction would eventually be the norm. Kinda like building in video games, or Legos. Basically, premade panels or blocks that automatically interlock and are pre-fitted with the required hookups and utilities etc.
I realized later that as cool as this might be, it would probably be very inefficient cost-wise, where some panels would contain the infrastructure and components for unneeded things.
Interesting thought though.
That’s kinda what I thought about 3d printed walls when I first heard about them. Good idea in theory, but maybe not in practice.
Maybe a combo of the two?
Basically, premade panels or blocks that automatically interlock and are pre-fitted with the required hookups and utilities etc.
This is basically how new houses are built. Assembled on site from pre fab components.
What I was thinking about back then was different. I understand what you mean with modular homes, but the idea was more like something you would see in a space show. Hallways with panels like 2x2’ that lock together to form the surface, structure, insulation, electrical and plumbing, with e-ink like material on the people facing side to change the look. Similar idea to the modular home concept, just on a much smaller scale, with extra bells and whistles.
I’m not really sure how else to describe it honestly.
I think you’re not wrong about modular being the ideal result but at the end of the day that’s… Kind of what we already have if you take a look at construction materials.
Not every part of a house needs utilities everywhere. Water, electrical, gas, HVAC, they all need to be specific about where they are and how they go there.
The parts that can be modular already kind of are. You buy kits for everything, modular toilet, modular flush valve in the toilet, modular sink, modular door, standard modular size, modular knob on the modular door because the client wants X door and Y knob, and Z marble top to their C color sink, modular top that fits modular sinks that fits modular handles.
Have you ever replaced a knob? You just go and buy a knob and it magically fits. Replace an HVAC vent? One of two standard sizes usually.
Modular shower with modular hookups to modular water. Everything to modular common specs.
Practically everything is already kinda plug in and screw together.
The thing is… None of this solves cheap housing we need. At best it makes it way easier to replace common parts that break, but even the cheapest replacements are expensive costs to the home owner. It’s money you didn’t intend on spending, surprise expenses.
And if it’s not, it’s luxury remodels. Which aren’t really at all related to solving the housing crisis. That makes a cheap home more expensive. And you have to understand while it makes a ton of sense to upgrade your property and investment… Almost any sensible homeowner is looking to do that and take a cheap home off the market and replace it with a less cheap or even expensive one.
there is very little capitalistic drive to build cheap homes. There’s a drive to build new luxury homes and upgrade cheap homes to less cheap. Modular exists, and it can help you do both of those things which isn’t creating cheap housing. It’s kind of just fucked imo. You need subsidies for cheap housing.
There is no way to make cheap housing with private companies. Everyone in that industry is addicted to free money. Start by burying all realtors in a large pit.
you tube is full of people shilling $15,000 Chinese prefabs. The cost of housing is land, foundation, utility, sewage, etc. Wood framed houses are not expensive to build.
Bottom line imo. As long as capitalist interests slow the adoption of standardization in the grand scheme of all production, construction, agriculture, infrastructure, etc. then we aren’t going to get there regardless.
In vehicles alone there are so so many proprietary things that each company produces specifically not to fit any other model of their own make, let alone fitting another company model. Yet, they all need almost exactly the same parts. It’s a bit insane when to look at it all from a few steps back.
But it’s not all the fault of the producers of any of these things. Demand drives supply. Culture in general needs to get to a place where a persons self worth is not dictated by what they own, but instead on how well they actually enjoy life. Richness in the form of experience.
Material possession is driving almost all the problems of the world right now. While that remains true, very little change can really happen unfortunately.
The housing problem specifically can be fixed, but no politician is willing to bite the corporate hand that feeds them. Ban home ownership for non-human entities and cap how many an individual can own in a district.
Rich people still get their houses in different places, but these hedgefund llcs and real estate firms buying up all the real estate have to liquidate. Done.
Unless the people demand it though, it isn’t going to happen.
Something something… thermal expansion… something.
