Friday, September 05, 2008
Concrete-Jet Printer Gets Caterpillar Funding: Print-Out Houses on the Way
Gizmodo: "Check out this lengthy vid: it shows how one day you may just call-in giant robots to print out a new home based on a CAD model. Research into the concrete-jet printer is being carried out by USC, and their technology can already build up complex concrete structures using technology that's half-CNC machine and half inkjet-like."
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9 comments:
This is crazy! I can't say that I would ever want to live in a concrete house, but this technology is brilliant. I look forward to seeing where this goes and how we can find uses for this technology in the future. How do people think of this stuff?!
What amazes me is that the article says that they will probably be able to lay the plumbing and electrical and make it part of the process. I would think that pipework would be extremely difficult in an automated process, but I look forward to seeing how much money can be saved on labor. Hopefully the savings will go to the development of emergency shelters and low-income housing.
The concrete printing is pretty cool, But it seems like there's a lot more that would need to be done for construction to be actually automated. They would need at very least to be able to lay rebar, pipe, and wire, which the article said was possible, but seems like it'd be a big challenge to develop. It's unclear if once all that was implemented it would be more efficient than human labor for standard construction. Also, certainly taking a layer-by-layer approach makes concrete drying time a substantial issue. http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome is a similar project printing plastics on the small scale, based on an open-design paradigm.
When the say they will be able to lay electrical and plumbing "pre-inserted", I wonder if that means lay them in the concrete. Maintaining that would be a pain
what scares me about this process is the vast numbers of people who will be put out of jobs: those who do the actual building and those who contract the jobs as well. Also, How do they plan on putting a HUGE track alongside where the house is to be built for the machine to move on? I think technology can aid us a lot, but sometimes I feel like it goes too far in replacing us.
This is very cool! While the technology has a lot to work on, it's quite remarkable. On a small scale like this, it seems like it would be very useful for modeling...I just wonder how practical this would be on a larger scale with all of the equipment.
That's really cool-at least in theory, but I don't think it will be replacing normal construction work anytime soon. Maybe the benefits outweigh the costs for moon bases, but as Alex and others pointed out, there seem to be a lot of kinks that need to get worked out before it becomes a practical process.
As super neato as this is, I have to agree with Ariel. Maybe it will save money when the machine is mastered and affordable, but that is only because it requires less people. As technology advances, the life is being sucked out of the blue collar worker and with it a way of life and work ethic that is not only important to those people and their families but to the American culture.
Additionally, I do not want to spend my life surrounded by things that robots crapped out for me. There is something left to be said for craftsmanship. When a person hand makes something it gives it life.
in about 20 years, we'll be ready to start building cities on other planets!
add this rapid-house-building/concrete pouring thing to the highway making machine and solar/wind power and within weeks, a new civilization can be up and running.
</sci-fi-daydream>
Realistically, i don't see this coming to market anytime soon. It's gonna take a lot of research and failed attempts before one of these will actually work. The speed at which the 3d rendering is shown is misleading - concrete doesn't dry all that fast, and to have the device drive on top of layers it just poured wouldn't work too well.
Good job on the rendering and animations though!
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