This giant 3D printer can build 10 prefab homes in under 24 hours (pics)

digitaltrends.com ^ | 4/17/2014 | Drew Prindle

[RoosterRedux]

3D printers are building some pretty amazing stuff lately: working speakers, wooden furniture, prosthetic limbs, and even foods like pizza and pasta — but WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co. of Shanghai, China is thinking much, much bigger.

Instead of pumping out small plastic parts with a desktop-sized printer, these guys print out prefabricated living structures out of concrete using a massive, building-sized 3D printing machine.

Now, to be sure, 3D printing houses isn’t a particularly new thing. Companies have embraced the idea of additive manufacturing since before the term “3D printing” had even entered the popular vernacular. For this reason, it’s not the houses that WinSun creates that are impressive — it’s the blistering pace at which it creates them. Running at full speed, the company’s printer is capable of producing up to ten 650 sq. foot homes in just 24 hours.

[Walmartian]

The company that I work for builds FEMA 361 Safe Rooms. Since we are in a serious seismic zone (New Madrid) the seismic reactions overrule the tornadic reactions. They are all built with prestressed concrete.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Voodoo is big there

[Jack Hydrazine]

Voodoo, government handouts, crime...

[GOPJ]

The Chinese love concrete because they don’t have trees: burned centuries ago for heat.

Half the trees in my yard were planted by me... I suspect the lack of trees in China is cultural.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Well I sort of trust wood more than anything else, due to its flexibility. I’m no engineer but I suppose the Roman Coliseum has stood for something like 2,000 years. Most of it, anyway. It was the Romans who popularized concrete, btw.

[Calvin Locke]

probably use the fiber impregnated concrete which would eliminate the need for rebar

China's bad enough on stretching the rebar that results in crappy construction that collapses as a result, are you really going to trust them with spec fibers, and not leftover chaff from who knows where?

[Telepathic Intruder]

Most of the forests in Europe were cut down during the colonial period. Germany is an exception because they weren’t expansionist at the time. England, Spain, and France have basically no forests left.

[spankalib]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67

Yes, very ugly. Of course the intelligentsia, aka “our betters” praise this as ‘o so wonderful’.
PTUI! I say.

Just Bauhaus boxes - efficient, utilitarian, ugly things - the better to herd people.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Wait a minute I mean they were cut down to build ships. The Europeans built thousands of ships during that time, depleting their forests.

[SC_Pete]

!

[Calvin Locke]

I suspect the lack of trees in China is cultural.

I recall articles about the cultural problems HK types were causing in Canada in anticipation of the turnover (1999?) to China from the UK.

The Chinese would buy lovely old homes in Vancouver, then have the centuries old trees cut down, much to the chagrin of the neighbors. The homes also lost a lot of their Vancouver "style" as well. Then the Chinese moved back to HK when it things didn't change all that much from when the British ran the place.

However, concrete homes is not just a China thing. Concrete's big in Europe too, because of the fear of fire, according to some friends that worked there for a few years.

[I am Richard Brandon]

'the printer eliminates the need for paid construction workers, these houses are extremely cheap to produce. When it’s all said and done, each 650 sq. foot home only costs about $4,800 to produce"

Which is why they won't come ro the USA.