Big Prints
Need a new plastic part for that toy? Print it out! Need a customized latte with a cool design on the milky foam? Print it, man! Need a classic car part that is out of production? I said print, boy! Today’s 3D printing technology lets you make whatever you want and whatever you need. It is only getting better, too. After a long day’s work of designing things and then printing them out on a 3D printer you feel tired and just want to go home. What home am I talking about? The home that you printed out using 3D printing and 3D scanning services. That’s right. 3D printing technology is not just limited to things that fit on a tabletop. 3D printing is going to large scale. Today we are seeing the rise of the 3D printed home.
Who’s doing it?
3D printed houses are starting to pop up. In Austin, Texas ICON and Newstory gave everyone a look at a 3D printed house that they designed. It is a small house of about 650 square feet. It has all the usual rooms. It has a kitchen, bathroom, and living room. It even has a front porch that can fit some chairs and a table. The amazing thing is that it only takes a day to build. From start to finish it only takes 24 hours, and the cost won’t break the bank. The total cost is less than $10,000 dollars. This is much less that what a normal house would cost.
How’d you do that?
So how do they pull off this fantastic housing feat? The answer is a giant robot called a Vulcan. Sounds kind of scary but it’s not one of those people destroying robots. It’s a good one that builds homes. The Vulcan is basically a smart cement pouring machine. It pours cement out in a particular pattern.
No new thing
This isn’t the first time a house has been printed using 3D printing and 3D scanning services. 3D printed houses have been done in the middle east, Russia, and Europe. ICON and Newstory also intend to print 3D houses in other countries. One of the goals of the company is to take the technology to countries as a way to help people without proper housing. They have already done this for several countries. Currently they are raising money to provide houses for families in El Salvador and so they will need to raise about $600,000. This is going to help a lot of poor communities, like those who are living in slums. It could possibly also help countries that suffered damage from some natural disaster, like flooding and earthquakes.
The whole 3D house printing using 3D scanning services and 3D printing services sounds like a home-run to me. Who knows, maybe they won’t stop there. If they are able to make a 3D printed house, what’s to stop them from making a 3D printed school, or even a 3D printed sky-scraper. To do that it would take one massively giant 3D printing robot.
