Shanghai Company 3D Prints 6-Story Apartment Building and Villa

ErnieKey writes Last year, a Shanghai based company made news by 3d printing a bunch of houses. Now that same company, WinSun has accomplished something never seen before. They have successfully 3d printed a 6-story apartment building as well as an incredibly detailed home. The structures were unveiled at the Suzhou Industrial Park. "These two houses are in full compliance with the relevant national standards," Ma Rongquan, the Chief engineer of China Construction No.8 Engineering Bureau, explained. "It is safe, reliable, and features a good integration of architecture and decoration. But as there is no specific national standard for 3D printing architecture, we need to revise and improve such a standard for the future."

Comments

you can't print 3D books!

[circletimessquare]

But as there is no specific national standard for 3D printing architecture, we need to revise and improve such a standard for the future.

and how will that standard be published and disseminated?

2D printers sigh with relief, they are still relevant

Is it really inexpensive?

[plover]

Sure it seems cheap, but have you seen the prices on the refill cartridges? Outrageous!

No one 3D printed a house

[Anonymous Coward]

This is simply a way to cast concrete in a factory and then wheel the parts to the construction site.

You still need to add all the plumbing, wiring, windows, doors, flooring, etc...

Settle down with the hyperbole already.

It's not any different from using factory-trimmed wood or pre-cast concrete steps.

But just say "3D printing" and the mindless hype starts and brains turn off everywhere.

Re:No one 3D printed a house

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair enough assessment. However I'd like to see you frame a house, sheet it, roof it, drywall it, put siding on, trim it, for under $4800.

For that price, I don't necessarily think this is just "mindless hype".

Re:No one 3D printed a house

[Mente]

"Although, most of the cost of buying a house has more to do with procuring the land then it does with the actual cost of building it."

In the US, in 99% of the country, this is not the case. The land is fairly cheap. I've owned homes in NJ and FL. NJ is the most densely populated state. In both cases, the land was valued at about 5%-10% of the total value of the home. Even in the case where the property was on a pond on the 18th hole of a golf course.

"Might make sense in some places where cost of land is quite low. Although in many of those places, the infrastructure for building the "house factory" and transporting the house to the site would be the major problem to solve."

Also in the US, there are a good number of "pre-manufactured" home companies that already transport homes in sections to their final location. My sister has one.

And I'm not talking about "mobile homes". http://www.allamericanhomes.co...

For a sufficiently low value of "printed"

[tibit]

The printed part is a concrete skeleton that acts as a form that needs to cure and then be filled with concrete. None of the finishing work is printed. It is basically a cast-concrete structure, where the typical metal forms were replaced with a 3D-printed skeleton. Of course the printed skeleton is a couple orders of magnitude rougher than what you'd get with metal forms, so the walls need heavy finishing before they can be presentable.

What they've done is perhaps a step in the right direction, but they are very, very far from truly 3D-printing an entire building. First of all, they'll need to have an inline concrete mixer that can continuously mix a fast-curing mix, so that they could print shapes that are filled-in. They also need to change the shape of the nozzle so that the deformed (compressed) shape will be rectangular, and not oval as it is now. They really did everything without much thought or understanding of what it takes to do it right. It is, at best, cargo cult 3D printing. They did all the right moves without understanding what it really takes to do it.