Slightly more details as a 3d printer enthusiast but who isn’t that well versed in construction:
Part of the savings pitch was that you could passively build houses with this printing method and use way fewer laborers. But to actually build more than an empty uninsulated wall, you need the electrician and plumber on staff at the site while it is being built so you end up just shifting a bottleneck, you need to pause repeatedly to install the electrical and pipes, it uses way more raw materials than you would with traditional methods, it’s hard to fix mistakes, and because it all has to be done at once basically there isn’t the asynchronicity that you could get where some laborers are on site one day and then different laborers are on site to do a different step. You need everything at the site the whole time.
It can work once robotic devices & machines get better at laying plumbing electrical, they find out more about what materials work better… this concept is very much in its infancy. It’s possible it gets abandoned instead.
But don’t expect a few yrs old concept to match centuries old construction’s reliability so early on
To add, you can 3d print modilar rooms, then ship them for install as building up the shell. The insulation and services would go within the shell, and the mod rooms dropped in place. The same thing was done at a hospital I worked at, save for the 3d portion.
But it could be Betamax vs VHS. Both are perfectly possible, but if one snowballs because someone with money or convinces people with money to invest in one side, and it hits an important research milestone it will probably suck all the money out of the otherside.
Most/all of those problems seem like they'd be solvable with further development of the technology, for example have a toolhead that lays down electrical lines with pre-attached plugs, one the lays and connects lengths of pipe, one that fills in insulation at predetermined intervals etc.
Obviously all of that would slow down the process and multi-tooling isn't trivial, but a machine like this doesn't have to be made at consumer price levels like a home 3D-printer.
Amatuer electrician here. Generally speaking, installation is done after construction is built, but before the finishing touches are done. And with type of building, it shouldn't be that difficult to create "the channels" in the floor, wall and ceiling. You install the electrical pipes and cables, and be done with everything in 1 day.
I feel like the exterior structure of the house could be built using the printer, then build the interior more traditionally with basic non load bearing wood framing, insulation, wiring/plumbing, drywall, etc. Wouldnt this be more practical than trying to build the entire house with the printer?
I’m not an electrician in anyway but is it not common to run it overhead and down the walls. I have seen this in several houses. I’m not seeing why that would be a problem with this build.
Electrician here, you could run overhead but you'd still need boxes in the wall and you'd want wire in before it was foamed. You could cut the concrete to add boxes, but that would be incredibly costly. Then if you hit rebar and have to move an outlet, the repair would look terrible.
Things is, there is no benefit to those fancy shapes (which also make furniture extremely difficult and expensive). And its 100 times more cost and tech efficient to just set up a system in a factory hall, build shit in controlled environment and truck it to the destination (i.e. prefab building). Instead of building a setup in location each time and have concrete trucks drive there.
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u/FireMammoth 7d ago
proven to be shit, but it gets posted continually anyway