It sounds like a headline from the future: the weekend before Thanksgiving, a bulldozer came for the first example of a printed home that was supposed to help the housing crisis in the city of Musc…
Maybe not completely a gimmick - you can actually build functional walls with it. But it is nowhere near replacing traditional construction in terms of cost or time.
Personally, I don’t see this process ever getting easier. Concrete pumping is a nasty, complicated and error-prone business. Once you mix concrete it is immediately starting to cure - you have a very limited amount of time before it turns into rock inside the printer. Just think about trying to pump a thick fluid with the density of stone - every part of the system is always on the edge of clogging up. It’s an impressive technical feat that any of these projects actually completed their walls, but none of the advertising videos are showing you how much micromanagement is being done to keep the printers working.
I don’t; at least no in our lifetimes (I’ll call that 50 years). I’ve been an engineer in the building industry for 25 of my 35 professional years, and I’ve watched multiple “disruptive” technologies progress and mature. 3D printing may very well become a useful tool for complex building geometry in certain niche markets but it will not take over any substantial part of the building industry during the life of any adult today. And I say that as someone who has helped new technologies to market, done design for nearly every (non-3d printed) material around (cordwood, straw, timbercrete - hell, I had a guy call me who wanted to build a garage out of 400 surplus 19" aluminum server racks he got at an auction).
3D printed walls will go right up there with geodesic domes, hyperbolic parabaloid concrete, and (as much as I hate to say it) structural insulated panels. It’s not that there is anything wrong with it, or the other methods I mention, it will simply not achieve mass adoption due to a combination of appearance and cost competitiveness of the finished product.
I mean, 3D printing itself was just a gimmick, some niche little curiosity that didn’t have any practical use. Things improve, new use cases emerge, times change.
Sure, but 3D printings greatest advancements have been opening up new engineering possibilities, not replacing old refined and efficient ones.
3D printed complex structures for cooling systems, or molecular structures are things we couldn’t do before. Or printing small batches of rare parts or prototypes that would otherwise require injection mold design and fabrication are great advancements.
We don’t have any problems building houses fast. It’s all financial (capitalistic) and social problems that are making home ownership hard right now.
It’s definitely overhyped.
Maybe not completely a gimmick - you can actually build functional walls with it. But it is nowhere near replacing traditional construction in terms of cost or time.
Personally, I don’t see this process ever getting easier. Concrete pumping is a nasty, complicated and error-prone business. Once you mix concrete it is immediately starting to cure - you have a very limited amount of time before it turns into rock inside the printer. Just think about trying to pump a thick fluid with the density of stone - every part of the system is always on the edge of clogging up. It’s an impressive technical feat that any of these projects actually completed their walls, but none of the advertising videos are showing you how much micromanagement is being done to keep the printers working.
You can’t see it getting any better? Has history not shown new technologies can change in ways unknown to the original inventors?
I don’t; at least no in our lifetimes (I’ll call that 50 years). I’ve been an engineer in the building industry for 25 of my 35 professional years, and I’ve watched multiple “disruptive” technologies progress and mature. 3D printing may very well become a useful tool for complex building geometry in certain niche markets but it will not take over any substantial part of the building industry during the life of any adult today. And I say that as someone who has helped new technologies to market, done design for nearly every (non-3d printed) material around (cordwood, straw, timbercrete - hell, I had a guy call me who wanted to build a garage out of 400 surplus 19" aluminum server racks he got at an auction).
3D printed walls will go right up there with geodesic domes, hyperbolic parabaloid concrete, and (as much as I hate to say it) structural insulated panels. It’s not that there is anything wrong with it, or the other methods I mention, it will simply not achieve mass adoption due to a combination of appearance and cost competitiveness of the finished product.
I mean, 3D printing itself was just a gimmick, some niche little curiosity that didn’t have any practical use. Things improve, new use cases emerge, times change.
Sure, but 3D printings greatest advancements have been opening up new engineering possibilities, not replacing old refined and efficient ones.
3D printed complex structures for cooling systems, or molecular structures are things we couldn’t do before. Or printing small batches of rare parts or prototypes that would otherwise require injection mold design and fabrication are great advancements.
We don’t have any problems building houses fast. It’s all financial (capitalistic) and social problems that are making home ownership hard right now.
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It’s definitely overhyped
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