this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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Futurology
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I seriously doubt 3D printed homes will ever be disruptive in any real sense. Effectively, it makes frame building easier. But that has never been the limiting factor in construction. All of the wiring, plumbing, etc is what is most difficult about building a home.
This company intends to do away with all that by just building a basic structure for people that need housing the most. Their "printer" is very cheap and fits in a shipping container. This is pretty much best case scenario, and it still would be upstaged by a shipping container of cinder blocks. The use case for 3D printed homes is luxury housing with funny shapes sold for high prices.
I used to really get exited over 3d printed buildings until coming across this argument. The most obvious thing that comes to mind afterwards to try to bring increased efficiency to house building would be structures or modules for one built in a dedicated factory to a common design, where those harder parts could be included, but prefab houses and trailer homes already do that.
the first microwave ovens were for rich people only too….
everything you’re saying might be true now, but there’s definitely a lot of potential and benefit to doing it like that…
I like your optimism but disagree with your conclusion. Even before factoring in cost, I think there are far more drawbacks than benefits for 3D printing a house. Even if it lowered the cost of frame building to free, it still wouldn't be used because all the other problems it would create. The costs of mitigating those problems will keep it niche and expensive.
The real innovations in home construction aren't going to be noticed by the average person. It will be things like new types of lumber, greater use of pre-fab sections, etc. This article is likely pushed by a PR firm for a startup to get funding from the UN based on buzzwords and hype.
Hmm. Do you have an actual number on what % frame building is?
If so, it's mostly interesting for sky scrapers or infrastructure that have proportionately a lot more deadweight (although reinforcement is also troublesome if using concrete). I suppose it might be easier to get a robot working in a 3D printed frame, too, but that's another non-trivial technology on top of it.
Average percentage of the building process, pg 3 so about 20% in the US, maybe more if you accept the interior finish. That being said I am highly skeptical this changes the needle, especially in the third world, because almost always if you have the land to build a shack, the cost of the shack isn’t going to keep you on the street.
Fundamentally, developers intuitively understand that building will be just about as profitable in ten years as now, but if you build to much now you will have an ‘oversupply crisis’ and the price as well as the associated profit margin will go down. Similarly, if you build a new building and are selling units very quickly, that means you’re below market price and should raise the price until they just barely sell, because that price jump will more than cover the cost of that apartment being empty for a few months or even years.
This all applies wether you’re in a shanty town in Brazil or in downtown Vancouver, and since even if you snapped your fingers and the cost to build in that shantytown halved it wouldn’t really change, I am really skeptical that even a highly transformative technology could change things, much less an expensive replacement for a few pallets of cinder blocks, a few friends, some drinks, and a weekend.
What you need is something like plentiful public housing providing a minimum quality of house at cost that the market must do better than, but groups like the IMF tend to despise countries doing things like that, because it’s a highly profitable investment when private foreigners do it but a reckless waste of money if the government tries to do the same thing.
Thanks! Very interesting.
I suppose you could print the plumbing directly into a building, but that has obvious maintenance risks.
That's also thought-provoking. For scavenged sheet metal screwed together I'm guessing it's always true. Rammed earth is a bit more work, but I don't know how it compares to cinder block both performance and price-wise.
In any case, a 3D printer imported from the expensive West will take a long time to earn itself back.
Only way I can see it happening is if they come up with a material where they can print the exterior facing, "studs" of some sort that are vertical like a typical 2x4 wall, and the subfloor/floor joists, and roof gables.
In such a way that typical trades people can still do the same work as they do in a regular home like drilling through the framework where needed to run pipes and wiring, throwing up drywall interior, and putting down tile or laminate flooring and putting up shingle roofing.
Wild theory time. I wonder how modular the piping/wiring could be made. With the right material (or technique) they could pause the print at various levels to do horizontal piping/wiring (or just put in conduit) and there's plenty of room in the infill to do vertical - joining the horizontal and vertical might need something new. Everything is going to be cadded up beforehand and presumably the material is going to be consistent. With the right fittings maybe the plumping snaps together and the wiring comes in precut lengths. (Am in UK, most houses are made from concrete blocks that need to be tracked for wiring/plumbing - not sure how much difference this makes).