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3D Printers To Build Houses
gbjbaanb writes to point out an article in the Sunday Times describing two separate programs where robots are being developed to build houses. The Los Angeles project is farther along than the one in the UK, but the article provides more details on the techniques employed in the latter. Liquid concrete and gypsum will be sprayed from nozzles in a manner analogous to an inkjet printer. From the article: "The first prototype — a watertight shell of a two-story house built in 24 hours without a single builder on site — will be erected in California before April. The robots are rigged to a metal frame, enabling them to shuttle in three dimensions and assemble the structure of the house layer by layer. The sole foreman on site operates a computer programmed with the designer's plans... Inspired by the inkjet printer, the technology goes far beyond the techniques already used for prefabricated homes. 'This will remove all the limitations of traditional building,' said [an architect involved with the UK project]. 'Anything you can dream you can build.'"
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
A few links could of course have helped this article... I think contourcrafting.org seems to be more or less the right page for the California project. The videos and animations are quite worth seeing.
For the Loughborough one, the closest I could come up with was Dr Soar's website...
" It may eventually be possible to use specially treated gypsum instead of glass window panes."
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http://www.isi.edu/CRAFT/
Much more details.
In the UK, there is usually a bloody good reason for the traditional building materials and designs in any area. Mass builders just drop standardised buildings at any angle to the weather which suits them, and then the owners wonder why the walls are always wet, or tiles fall off every time the prevailing wind blows.
The five year gap before it is due to be commercialised in the UK may be due to the development needed to address UK-specific building problems, but it is more likely just to be under funding.
In case you think this is Luddite prejudice, I live in a town where many houses date back to the 17th Century and are built of local materials. Part of the town centre was demolished in the 1970s to build small modern houses. Guess which houses had to be demolished less than 30 years later? New builds this century are already starting to look a bit decrepit as the wind and rain (which are thrown off by our local stone) do their work on cheap modern building materials.
Pining for the fjords
... but luckily youtube has a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7r-qlKkUo
Dependency hell? =>
Loans are allowed in Islam - taking interest from a loan is not.
However, there are islamic banks that take no interest (taxes a loan in different ways), so even in the most islamic country you could take a loan from the most islamic bank
You aroused my curiosity, and it turns out that the video at http://www.isi.edu/craft/CC/Welcome_files/resource s/animation.html (thanks to mindriot for pointing this out) shows a simple solution.
For those on limited bandwidth connections, the basic gist of it is that the floor & walls are "printed" and then a separate robot arm picks up some flat (almost I-beam looking things) that it lays across the roof. The I-beams are then "printed" over to hold them in place & seal them.
I've used the new push together plastic plumbing myself to fit a shower - its extremely easy and down right fool proof. As long as these ducts were smooth and gently curved at corvers pushing this piping down it should not be an issue - ditto for electricals (and cat5)
The sensible designer would also future proof their house by having redundant ducting installed at build time for any future need.
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Concrete with re-bar is reinforced concrete. Re-bar is not only put in to resist tensile forces due to bending. Re-bar is put in to prevent the concrete cracking. That said there are systems (developed for spayed concrete in tunnels) that incorporate steel of syntheic fibres which have a similar effect to re-bar but are just mixed into the concrete.
Given other comments in this discussion is is probably worth noting that brick walls have no tensile strength, unreinforced concrete is better. As long as this approach is only used for vertical walls there is no need to reinforce (except to rpevent cracking as mentioned above).
Art is the mathematics of emotion
Considering cement/concrete are aggitated to remove air pockets when poured, I imagine it would be possible.
Though, it would likely be rather brittle.
You see, they are aggitated to remove the air pockets because thoose air pockets are one of the things that can cause it to crack.
Most new houses in the UK are built using aerated concrete blocks (e.g. "celcon") because these provide a better insulation, and building regulations now require an otherwise difficult-to-achieve 0.35 watts per square metre degree kelvin heat loss via walls. They've been in common use for around 20 years now, and cracking doesn't seem to be a problem. They do crumble a bit if you hit them on a corner, but the way they're used (inner skin only, usually, and with a layer of plaster/plasterboard applied to the inside) you don't tend to be able to do that, so it isn't a real issue.