The industry as a whole still has some kinks to work out.
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. 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.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
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, but no one has cracked all the pieces require dto implement that yet.
SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 5 weeks ago
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.
blackbeans@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Which country are you talking about? Prefab parts are 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.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 5 weeks ago
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.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
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.