I want a concrete printer!

Last week I was having a conversation with one of the guys here at the office, and he was telling me about some tools he had designed, and 3D printed so that he could do some maintenance on his bike.

I often forget that we have access to things like 3D printers at our local library, and even though these are basic devices, one can still print some pretty nifty and useful things. Head over to thingiverse to see what others have created or use Tinkercad to create your own.

This then got me thinking of what large-scale applications its being used in. Don’t get me wrong, I knew printing buildings was a thing and it was becoming a lot more common, I just never took the time to go down that rabbit hole. I’m in the process of building a new house. The slab was poured at the end of Feb and unfortunately manufacturing, and material shortages are resulting a potential 9-month delay… It typically takes 19-21 weeks if there are no delays.

Well, not for this house. It took Dutch printing service TAM (Twente Additive Manufacturing) just 11 days to construct this 3D printed house is listed on Airbnb

SQ4D, formerly SQ3D put a 3D printed house up for sale for the first time in the USA in 2021.  Coming in at US$ 299,999.00 its 50% cheaper than comparable home in its area.

And how about this “2021 German Innovation Award Winner” being the first 3D printed house in Germany. This was printed with the fastest 3D concrete printer on the market, creating 1m of concrete per second.

While I don't think this will become the mainstream way of domestic and commercial construction for quite a while to come, but it does beg the question as to would it be viable to build temporary or even replace buildings that have been destroyed by mother nature or us humans? I can think of Ukraine as an example, I mean its going to take decades to physically rebuild that country, but advances in building techniques like this could drastically reduce that time.