Printable housing
University of Southern California engineer Behrokh Khoshnevis and colleagues are developing a 3D printer for houses. Called Contour Crafting, the system spits out layers of concrete to build a structure from the bottom up. Caterpillar is sponsoring Khoshnevis's research. From the Contour Crafting page:
Contour Crafting technology has great potential for automating the construction of whole structures as well as sub-components. Using this process, a single house or a colony of houses, each with possibly a different design, may be automatically constructed in a single run, embedded in each house all the conduits for electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning. The potential applications of this technology are far reaching including but not limited to applications in emergency, low-income, and commercial housing.Contour Crafting (company page), "Caterpillar Inc. Funds Viterbi 'Print-a-House' Construction Technology" (USC.edu)
Our research also addresses the application of Contour Crafting in building habitats on other planets. Contour Crafting will most probably be one of the very few feasible approaches for building structures on other planets, such as the Moon and Mars, which are being targeted for human colonization before the end of the new century.
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Now McCain won't be the only one who loses track of how many houses they have!
Great idea, but builder and framer's unions will fight this thing tooth and nail.
I don't see any provision for the key to concrete construction: steel re-enforcement.
mmm, one photo shows a wall section poured like corrugated cardboard (ie: high compression load resistant), also is it ordinary concrete?
#3 - Once you get past "OMFG it's a freakin' giant laser printer shooting concrete instead of ink!!!" then you can easily jump to "OMFG it's a giant freakin' CAD-powered nail gun shooting 10 foot long rebar rods instead of nails!!!!"
#3- the first thing I thought of, too. How do you get the rebar and wire net installed?
Hate to rain on this parade, but unless this thing squirts out a house in a matter of minutes, you're going to have concrete going "off" in the mixer, pipes, pump- you name it. And it won't be pretty.
You know Edison tried this right?
#6, there's an easy solution to the concrete setting. You mix it on-site in smaller batches. Though they do show a Ready-mix truck rather than one that can mix on demand.
Hmmm.. veeeeery old news:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4764
http://www.isi.edu/news/news.php?story=81
I could barely remember when in 2004 german media was all over it, because of the "great idea" and the involvement of Degussa corp. back then...
I wonder what happened in the meantime ?!
Maybe burned the money of Degussa and now switching to Caterpilar ;-)
I can remember reading about plans for similar construction technologies twenty or more years ago. They weren't described by analogy with computer printers, but the basic concept was the same.
@mattw
yes, he did, and more to the point, it was a failure for the reasons that this idea will be: unchangeable form freezes too much of the building and locks future users into the use-patterns determined by the almighty designer or engineer. I don't mean that the houses can't be different: the article says that it can allow for design variations. I mean that once built, you're stuck with what it is: ever taken down a concrete wall?
The point of traditional construction systems is that they accommodate change, and are skill-appropriate to the industry and society. Unless you count the cost of change over the life of the building, you can't provide realistic cost-benefit.
What's really sad is that these boy (and maybe girl) geniuses don't have the historical perspective that comes up in the first ten Boing Boing comments. What does that say about the research process?
if you are stamping out free housing for the poor a lot of that stuff you mentioned goes away.
If you're ever in the Doylestown, Pennsylvania area, visit Fonthill and the Moravian Tile Works.
Fonthill was the home of Henry Chapman Mercer. Built between 1908 and 1912, it is an early example of poured-in-place concrete and features 44 rooms, over 200 windows, 18 fireplaces and 10 bathrooms.
It's sort of like a man-made cave, rooms on different levels connected by ramps and stairs, built in furniture...very interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonthill_(house)
http://www.coyleandsharpe.com/mp3/Printer-Painter.mp3
why look at it as old news when you could say that it's already been the future for said amount of time?
This is completely fucking brilliant...it really is(or at least should be)an improvement of a technique of architecture/building that has existed for ages, and was especially popular from the early 1910's onward to the big war.
damn it! the house printer is jammed, AGAIN! reload driver? is the driver on a break?! PC Load Letter?! What do these error messages mean!?
The printer will be dirt cheap, but they'll screw you on the consumables.
If you want to see the real potential of this technology, check out the Jellyfish House modelfrom two years ago(a hypothetical 'house of the future', exhibited in Vitra Design Museum's Open House exhibition), printed at smaller scale, but proposed to bebuilt the same way, here's a link to some shots:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/isar/sets/72157603825985726/5726/
@omnivore:
Very good point. Pure concrete construction won't be able to solve every type of building request.
However, if there's going to be a super-accurate robot gantry hovering over the site anyway, what's to say it can't also do things like lay bricks, hold wooden/steel frames in place and nailgun or screw them in, or emulate any one of a number of current building methods?
If it can squirt concrete, it can squirt mortar. If it can pick-and-place lintels and roof beams, it can do the same for bricks, tiles, and pre-assembled components. Put one or two experienced builders on site to oversee the process, catch any problems, and 'drive' the machine in much the same way as a train - start, stop, and keep an eye on everything.
My guess is that equating Contour Crafting simply to concrete-laying is like linking car-factory robots to arc-welding. Sure, that's one thing they can do, but you may as well add some additional end-effector tools and automate the entire assembly process.
Hempcrete!
If my house is to be printed by a 3D printer, I don't want it shaped like a box. I want it like a nautilus shell. :)