It sounds like a headline from the future: the weekend before Thanksgiving, a bulldozer came for the first example of a printed home that was supposed to help the housing crisis in the city of Musc…
Maybe not completely a gimmick - you can actually build functional walls with it. But it is nowhere near replacing traditional construction in terms of cost or time.
Personally, I don’t see this process ever getting easier. Concrete pumping is a nasty, complicated and error-prone business. Once you mix concrete it is immediately starting to cure - you have a very limited amount of time before it turns into rock inside the printer. Just think about trying to pump a thick fluid with the density of stone - every part of the system is always on the edge of clogging up. It’s an impressive technical feat that any of these projects actually completed their walls, but none of the advertising videos are showing you how much micromanagement is being done to keep the printers working.
I mean, 3D printing itself was just a gimmick, some niche little curiosity that didn’t have any practical use. Things improve, new use cases emerge, times change.
Sure, but 3D printings greatest advancements have been opening up new engineering possibilities, not replacing old refined and efficient ones.
3D printed complex structures for cooling systems, or molecular structures are things we couldn’t do before. Or printing small batches of rare parts or prototypes that would otherwise require injection mold design and fabrication are great advancements.
We don’t have any problems building houses fast. It’s all financial (capitalistic) and social problems that are making home ownership hard right now.
It’s definitely overhyped.
Maybe not completely a gimmick - you can actually build functional walls with it. But it is nowhere near replacing traditional construction in terms of cost or time.
Personally, I don’t see this process ever getting easier. Concrete pumping is a nasty, complicated and error-prone business. Once you mix concrete it is immediately starting to cure - you have a very limited amount of time before it turns into rock inside the printer. Just think about trying to pump a thick fluid with the density of stone - every part of the system is always on the edge of clogging up. It’s an impressive technical feat that any of these projects actually completed their walls, but none of the advertising videos are showing you how much micromanagement is being done to keep the printers working.
I mean, 3D printing itself was just a gimmick, some niche little curiosity that didn’t have any practical use. Things improve, new use cases emerge, times change.
Sure, but 3D printings greatest advancements have been opening up new engineering possibilities, not replacing old refined and efficient ones.
3D printed complex structures for cooling systems, or molecular structures are things we couldn’t do before. Or printing small batches of rare parts or prototypes that would otherwise require injection mold design and fabrication are great advancements.
We don’t have any problems building houses fast. It’s all financial (capitalistic) and social problems that are making home ownership hard right now.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
It’s definitely overhyped
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