Posted on 02/14/2015 4:46:48 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Robotic building by Contour Crafting won the grand prize in a NASA magazine's Create the Future contest.
In the not-too-distant future, building a new home may be as simple as printing it out.
The process of wielding 3D printers to make homes is in its infancy today, but someday soon you may look out your window at a large-scale printer, swiftly spitting out a whole home under the instruction of just one operator.
"Generally, they'll be much cheaper, much faster, much safer and with much nicer architectural features [than traditional homes]," says Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, creator of and lead researcher for Contour Crafting, one of the leading companies working on scaling 3D-printed homes for the masses.
It's really not as crazy as it sounds. There are 3D printers making dishes, building furniture and repairing appliances right now. But a home needs a much bigger printer.
On any scale, 3D printing works like this: Someone creates a three-dimensional digital design and sends it to the printer, where it's translated into something called a "G-code" file that slices a 3D design into thin layers....
(Excerpt) Read more at homes.yahoo.com ...
Oh good....the printer can print wiring, plumbing, and IT systems too.....
LOL.
And they won a prize for that?
No, the printer doesn’t “print” those things, they are added in during the manufacturing process.
Since the “building” is “printed” on site......there is no manufacutring process...
the article clearly make the erronious claim that only “ONE” operator is needed....
Only someone totally unfamiliar with building anything could come to that conclusion.
How does one “print” a sewer line under ground?
Water lines?
Electrical wiring?
No it’s still going to take a crew of “people” to build a house.....
Unless you arent planning on taking a crap indoors...
I could see this as a futuristic way to build shelter on the moon or another planet.
This planet - maybe a way to build very air tight exterior walls. Or perhaps the ability to make complex architectural features. But not really a need to build a whole house...and lots of complications.
But everyone said (quite rightly): "It's a proof of concept. You CAN print your own gun! It will just get better! Just wait 10 years and you'll see vast improvements in quality! It's early days, but this is a new era in the right to keep and bear arms!"
Now we see 3D houses.
And people shrug and say: "What about this? What about that? This thing won a prize????"
Some people have no vision.
They started with this:
And got better quickly.
They’ll need to print a whole lot of chairs for the tradesman to sit on their asses when their are no jobs in the building trades anymore. LOL
Smart leaders will be thinking about how to occupy people's time when the people serve no essential purpose.
When it comes to manufacturing gizmos, you are probably on to something. However, I think in fields such as healthcare it is probably going to he quite a while before machines can replace the person that is wiping butts, let alone fixing your eyes, heart, or even teeth. Now some of these procedures already are using fairly advanced technologies... but I doubt whether even the but wiper is going to be replaced any time soon.
IIRC the Robotics Lab at MIT has been doing the undergrad project that has students try to develop machines that take care of tomatoes from seedlings to end of life including the harvest.
Police, Fire and Healthcare may be the last of the jobs available but they are becoming more automated and telepresence allowing cheap labor may be the tech influence there.
DK
I do not disagree with you. In health care in most cases they actually are already transitioning to models where most of the actual work is done by “cheap” labor. Actual nurses mostly supervise and document and have much less if any hands on time with patients. That is one of the primary reasons why the quality of our health care is declining even while prices rise out of control.
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