From The Daily Telegraph of the UK
The walls of the houses are literally printed by a gigantic machine. (I have reproduced the article below, as it may be behind a pay wall.)
The finished product looks like a prefab house to me, but much sturdier, since the walls are made of concrete!...
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Watch: 3D-printer
completes final homes in world’s largest printed neighbourhood
Printing offers a
faster, cheaper and less wasteful way to build new housing
8 August 2024 •
In Texas, a towering
45ft robot is putting the finishing touches on what is thought to be the
world’s largest 3D-printed neighbourhood.
Icon, the developer
behind the project, is printing off its 100th house at Wolf Ranch in Georgetown
this summer, less than two years after kicking off the project.
It takes around three
weeks for work on each home to be completed.
Concrete powder, water,
sand and other additives are mixed together and pumped into a 4.75 tonne
printer called Vulcan.
The mixture is then
piped like icing through a nozzle along a pre-programmed path, layer-by-layer.
The resulting appearance of the walls is likened to corduroy.
Printing off homes in
this way is faster,
cheaper, requires fewer workers and minimises waste, according to the company.
Senior project manager
Conner Jenkins said: “It brings a lot of efficiency to the trade market. Where
there were maybe five different crews coming in to build a wall system, we now
have one crew and one robot delivering that scope. [There’s] the same advantages
for the supply chain system.
“We hope that as we
[consolidate] these different systems, we can bring down volatility in the
housing market.”
Printed homes at Wolf
Ranch are priced from around $450,000 (£353,510) to roughly $600,000. They
range from 1,500 to 2,000 sq ft and consist of either three or four bedrooms in
a single-storey floorplan.
Residents Lawrence
Nourzad and Angela Hontas, who bought a printed home at the ranch earlier this
summer, compared their new house to a “fortress”.
Mr Nourzad said the
walls are solid enough to “go head-on with maybe an F2, F3 tornado and be pretty resilient”. They were praised for keeping the
interior cool in the Texas heat, but criticised for causing connectivity
problems.
Mr Nourzad said: “These
are really strong, thick walls. That’s what provides a lot of value for us as
homeowners. But signal doesn’t transfer through these walls very well.”
The walls are designed
to be resistant to water, mould, termites and extreme weather.
While the walls are
printed, the foundation and metal roof are installed through traditional
construction methods.
For its next project,
Icon has been contracted by Nasa to built shelters and landing pads that are
suitable for the Moon’s surface.
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Watch: 3D-printer completes
final homes in world’s largest printed neighbourhood Printing offers a
faster, cheaper and less wasteful way to build new housing |
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