Posted on 11/08/2013 7:25:24 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Could 3D printing help solve the world's shelter crises?
At a TED talk in Ojai, Calif., Behrokh Khoshnevis, director of the Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California, said nearly 1 billion people in the world don’t have access to adequate shelter, a situation that breeds poverty, disease, illiteracy, crime and overpopulation. To address this problem, Khoshnevis is developing a process called Contour Crafting to use 3D printing technology to build entire houses.
Khoshnevis said the giant 3D printers his team is developing can build a 2,500-square-foot house in as little as 20 hours. The Contour Crafting 3D printers could even do the electrical work, plumbing, tiling, finishing work and painting.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
That may sound too good to be true, but Khoshnevis showed a video demonstrating prototypes of massive 3D printers in action. With a nozzle that secreted a dense, high-performance concrete, the 3D printer erected a wall layer by layer. The walls are hollow to save on materials and make them lighter, but their strength clocks in at about 10,000 psi -- more than traditional housing walls, Khoshnevis said.
The buildings don’t have to be linear, he pointed out. To make the buildings structurally sound as well as beautiful, the 3D printers can print curves....
(Excerpt) Read more at ibtimes.com ...
Interesting. But I don’t see how having a pulp mill, a paper plant, a 3-D printer manufacturing facility, an electrical power grid, and all the rest of it is going to be cheaper or more efficient than a chain saw, a portable saw mill, a hammer, nails, a screwdriver, screws, and so forth.
How about a space station built around a massive one, to print spacecraft too large to launch from our gravity well?
I don’t know where you’d get the raw materials, maybe a space elevator, or launching them up with a rail gun.
Well, inkjets are yesterday’s news. For $200-300 you can get a decent home color laser now.
The real drawback is that toner is more expensive than ink, but the cartridges do last longer than those little inkjet ones.
have the station in asteroid orbit mining the belt for raw material....nom nom nom
Attributing overpopulation to lack of adequate shelter is pretty wacky, too. Hey honey, we don’t have anyplace to live, so why don’t we make babies in the rain so we can all wallow in the mud and starve? Sounds logical to me. /s
For your printer you need to embrace ‘econo-print’
In 3-d terms that would be track housing - I guess...
Can they print us a new president?
****I looked into something called grancrete, a similar spray on technology idea. Big fly in the ointment is the stuff would seize up the spray equipment and also had cracking problems.****
Many years ago I witnessed a neighbor install newfangled cement fiber roofing panels. They were fine for about 3 years. Then the disintegration was like a Tsunami.
I also know of a guy who had a house built with blown-in cement and rebar walls using forms. He is still happy twenty years later.
“Can they print us a new president?”
No... These are 3D printers. The pres__ent (no ID) is a 2D character: flat, having no depth, only presenting an appearance of a real person while in fact being without substance.
Looking at my previous post, anything would still be an improvement...
In marketing parlance, that’s a “standee,” a lifesize cardboard cutout, usually of some celebrity paid to endorse a product.
****Attributing overpopulation to lack of adequate shelter is pretty wacky, too. Hey honey, we don’t have anyplace to live, so why don’t we make babies in the rain so we can all wallow in the mud and starve? Sounds logical to me. /s****
Especially when the lack of adequate shelter is directly caused by overbearing government in third world countries who refuse to adopt Capitalistic free market reforms because they lose control of the distribution channels that they abuse like a mob boss to enrich themselves.
Heinlein used to write about how primitive our building technology was. Compared how much a car would cost if you brought the raw steel, rubber etc to your house and built the car there.
“Khoshnevis said the giant 3D printers his team is developing can build a 2,500-square-foot house in as little as 20 hours.”
Very interesting, but I don’t buy the 20 hour claim. Just setting up the machinery and taking it down will take more than 20 hours. (maybe they’re not including that in their time estimate).
-— The Contour Crafting 3D printers could even do the electrical work, plumbing, tiling, finishing work and painting. -—
Wuhuuut?!?!
Oh, but pointing out the shortcomings of third world kleptocracies is discriminatory, or even racist if said kleptocracy is communist-supported. Can’t have that. It’s our fault they’re copulating in the mud.
Really? I thnk the White House . gov is used as a shelter breeding stupidity and illiteracy. Not only is Obama stupid, he grows stupider yet.
2,500 is impressive but who could live in a square foot house?
I like 3D printing, but if your goal is **cheap** housing, nothing is cheaper to build than a hole. Mines. Caves.
An automated digging plus walls and roof support machine would carve out new homes for the homeless at a much lower price than a concrete 3D printer.
Dirt Cheap*
*that’s a joke right there, son...
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