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Comment on Iowa Demolishes Its First 3D Printed House

SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Is 3D printing houses a gimmick? Why not good old modular houses made in factories and shipped?

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cm0002@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not necessarily, the tech is still new and has its issues that need to be worked out.

Ultimately though, modular houses are nice, but they’re all similar to each other because they’re made in a factory and have a size limit.

3D printed houses have the advantage of being able to be any shape or layout (Within reason) that the builders/homeowners want while still having the potential to be significantly cheaper and faster than standard construction.

Basically, it’s a good middle ground between standard construction and factory modular homes

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- SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  modular houses are nice, but they’re all similar to each other
  
  I’m not so sure. New American and Canadian houses are famously similar to each other. We build big neighborhood blocks of almost identical looking track houses. If I could, instead, order a house from an online catalog, or from several different competing modular housing companies, I feel like that might actually increase aesthetic diversity.
  
  We used to have more diversity in housing styles, which is why older neighborhoods have lots of different home styles. But a lot of those 100 year old neighborhoods are actually full of Sears catalog homes. Basically, pre-cut, pre-fabricated modular homes!
  
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  - sleet01@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    *tract, apparently.
    
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- NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  having the potential to be significantly cheaper and faster than standard construction
  
  I don’t see how this can ever be true. The only material that can come out of the printer is the concrete for the walls. The walls then have to be reinforced (because concrete is only good under compression), insulated, finished, and then have windows, doors, wiring and plumbing installed… all of which is still just manual labor. The walls aren’t even the expensive part of homebuilding.
  
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  - Panq@lemmy.nz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It depends on what you’re building. If you want a normal rectangular house, 3D printing will be incredibly inefficient and pointless compared to traditional framing techniques.
    
    On the other hand, if you want curved walls, traditional framing becomes incredibly complex and expensive, whereas 3D printing takes exactly the same materials and labour regardless.
    
    I think 3D printing an entire house is just a gimmick, but it will still be an incredibly useful tool, even if only used for simple things like making rounded foundation pads or retaining walls that follow the landscape or curved hallways connecting modular buildings.
    
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    nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    How many people actually want curved walls though?
    
    You need curved couches, shelves, cabinets, windows and picture frames then too.
    
    Geodesic domes housing is even faster to build, but it turns out not very many people like living in circular (or spherical) houses.
    
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NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s definitely overhyped.

Maybe not completely a gimmick - you can actually build functional walls with it. But it is nowhere near replacing traditional construction in terms of cost or time.

Personally, I don’t see this process ever getting easier. Concrete pumping is a nasty, complicated and error-prone business. Once you mix concrete it is immediately starting to cure - you have a very limited amount of time before it turns into rock inside the printer. Just think about trying to pump a thick fluid with the density of stone - every part of the system is always on the edge of clogging up. It’s an impressive technical feat that any of these projects actually completed their walls, but none of the advertising videos are showing you how much micromanagement is being done to keep the printers working.

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- UrPartnerInCrime@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You can’t see it getting any better? Has history not shown new technologies can change in ways unknown to the original inventors?
  
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  - overzeetop@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I don’t; at least no in our lifetimes (I’ll call that 50 years). I’ve been an engineer in the building industry for 25 of my 35 professional years, and I’ve watched multiple “disruptive” technologies progress and mature. 3D printing may very well become a useful tool for complex building geometry in certain niche markets but it will not take over any substantial part of the building industry during the life of any adult today. And I say that as someone who has helped new technologies to market, done design for nearly every (non-3d printed) material around (cordwood, straw, timbercrete - hell, I had a guy call me who wanted to build a garage out of 400 surplus 19" aluminum server racks he got at an auction).
    
    3D printed walls will go right up there with geodesic domes, hyperbolic parabaloid concrete, and (as much as I hate to say it) structural insulated panels. It’s not that there is anything wrong with it, or the other methods I mention, it will simply not achieve mass adoption due to a combination of appearance and cost competitiveness of the finished product.
    
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- Red_October@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I mean, 3D printing itself was just a gimmick, some niche little curiosity that didn’t have any practical use. Things improve, new use cases emerge, times change.
  
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  - nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure, but 3D printings greatest advancements have been opening up new engineering possibilities, not replacing old refined and efficient ones.
    
    3D printed complex structures for cooling systems, or molecular structures are things we couldn’t do before. Or printing small batches of rare parts or prototypes that would otherwise require injection mold design and fabrication are great advancements.
    
    We don’t have any problems building houses fast. It’s all financial (capitalistic) and social problems that are making home ownership hard right now.
    
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DScratch@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s easier to ship material than finished chunks. You can print all the shapes you need from one batch of material instead of having to fabricate and ship the correct modules.

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- SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  But then you need to do significant construction with that material. And it’s not just one material: there are pipes, electrical, insulation, flooring, etc. It’s only replacing an few admittedly major parts of the material. Everything else still takes tons of labor. I could be wrong, but I’m not convinced the labor savings are greater compared to modular housing.
  
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  - bhmnscmm@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You’re completely right. The framing, which is what this 3D printing replaces, is one of the fastest parts of home construction.
    
    The site preparation, utilities, and interior finishing work are what take the longest. Modular homes can significantly speed up all of those components.
    
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  - DScratch@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You’re probably right, right now. But I am put in mind of ya boi Ben Franklin when asked “What use is [a prototype hot air balloon]” He replied “What is the use of a newborn child?”
    
    Early plastic 3d printers were clunky and of poor quality, but now entire industries have spawned around them and they have revolutionised at-home prototyping.
    
    Right now, this is a gimmick. But the potential, if nurtured is pretty serious, imo.
    
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    SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah, I suppose I’m questioning even the potential. Some technologies don’t pan out, which is why we’re not all riding around on our Segways. Underestimating future technology is certainly one risk, but the other risk is assuming every technology is inevitable progress.
    
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  - WarmSoda@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    How much do you know about the costs for standard construction vs printed construction?
    
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    SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Given how new this is, I doubt anyone knows how much this will cost at scale, even the manufacturers.
    
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dewritoninja@pawb.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The real solution would be medium density housing, this is the best in terms of ecology and economy. Buy you know that’s communism or something

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- SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes, strong agree! Medium density is also the most affordable to build per square footage, compared to low density detached single family homes and high density super tall glass and metal towers.
  
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bartolomeo@suppo.fi ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It might be cynical but 3D printed construction eliminates jobs and thereby increases the share of newly created wealth to the one who owns the means of production, and that seems to be attractive these days, especially if the means or production are priced or regulated out of reach of most everyone.

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- BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m all for reducing jobs, tax the hell out of the owners of the means of production.
  
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  - bartolomeo@suppo.fi ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Hell yea, then distribute that money so people aren’t bound to work and can pursue health, hobbies, relationships, self-improvement, take care of their children & parents, or whatever!
    
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ElleChaise@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Why not wood? I guess progress is funny like that. We reach the end of one era where we're masters at one technique, only to leap to the next era where we're completely clueless using a new one. I'm sticking with wood, it's been good to me lol.

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- Kbin_space_program@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Wood isn't particularly sustainable the way it is being "farmed."
  
  We're annihilating the rainforests and interior forests of north-west North America to build homes, and its not sustainable at all.
  
  The pine beetle epidemic that has ravaged the interior forests of British Columbia is due to two things. One is warmer winters from climate change. The other is that the logging industry replanted the logged forests with the species of pine they could sell the easiest, not what was good for the forests or the land. if they had planted any sort of diversity of trees it would not have been nearly as bad as it turned out.
  
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  - KinglyWeevil@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It definitely sucks. The difference in quality between the pine boards my dad purchased at the hardware store for projects when I was a child, vs the pine boards available now when I get some for a project is NUTS. The number of rings visible on the end has dropped from a dozen or more to a mere handful, they’re way less dense than they used to be.
    
    I fucking HATE buying lumber because it’s an all day ordeal to sort through the stack of boards to find a dozen that aren’t warped, crooked, knotted, rough edged, or missing a corner because it came from the very edge of the log. I almost wish they’d leave an open space next to the stack so I could stick all the trash boards there as I go through them, because only one out of every ten to fifteen is actually usable for anything where precision or appearance matters.
    
    Or you can choose to pay a premium over the already absurd (but appropriate, considering the factors you mentioned) for “Select” grade boards. It’s legitimately difficult to build any kind of furniture type project under what it would cost to buy from a company producing the same thing using an economy-at-scale advantage.
    
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    wjrii@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    My friend, you need to find yourself a lumberyard. The framing lumber is for framing, and the select boards are not worth it unless you need exactly one board. Not that I haven't done the same thing with "2-by" material, but it's hard to complain. Those teenaged twigs in Home Depot are plenty strong enough to hold up a house and are way more sustainable than the beauties our ancestors nailed together and hid behind lath and plaster walls. Not quite THIS bad, but sad in its own way.
    
    Also, the trick is to grab a 2x12 and rip it to width. 😉
    
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guitarsarereal@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They’re not a gimmick, they’re dirt cheap to build relative to the quality you get (when you’re not a pack of literal community college students using a non-load-bearing material like hempcrete, working on a learning project).

The way it’s done drives the cost through the floor, even relative to a modular house, and, let’s try thinking about it for a second, if you take a liquid concrete mix and poop it out in a line and cure it properly, how is this different or worse than taking that same liquid concrete mix, dumping it into a mold you built, and then also curing it properly? Because that’s (in very simple terms) the basic difference between 3d printing houses and building them.

Basically, it’s a lot cheaper (I’ve seen multi-bedroom houses – real houses, not haha this is a big shed that you can abuse as a studio if you lie to your county planning department – printed for under $20k) and when done right, the quality is the same as any other concrete construction. The secret is just like any other construction: you have to do it right!

Right now, they’re super rare because there are no standardized building codes available for them, which means planning departments don’t have industry-standard guidance they can draw on for their own building codes, so in most places you just can’t get them approved.

Like with any technology, there will be a gold rush and tons of idiots doing it wrong or badly to turn a quick buck on the hype, but come on. New technologies are transformative, and additive construction or whatever you want to call it has tons of potential.

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- Salad_Fries@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Its worth noting, your numbers are super misleading…
  
  the manufactured home cost in the bob vila article includes the entire house (foundations, land clearing, utilities, finishes, permit fees, etc)… aka, for the 270k, youre getting a move-in ready house.
  
  The 3D printed home cost in your builtin article appears to only include the basic structure (aka the cheap part). Still gotta pay teams of people to come on-site to do everything else. The cheapest they mentioned was $299k for a move-in ready house.
  
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  - guitarsarereal@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Well, I double checked because I’ve done a fair amount of research and the All3DP article was literally just a random example I found off Google. A realtor interviewed for Yahoo! finance said buyers could expect to pay about $15k-$50k for a starter 3d-printed home. Doesn’t sound like I’m actually in the wrong ballpark here.
    
    …yahoo.com/…/3d-printed-houses-cost-actually-1400…
    
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Kbin_space_program@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Because you can't as easily slap the word "luxury" in front of "mobile home" and have it be believable.

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- SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Pre-fabricated homes are not all mobile homes. I wrote this elsewhere, but a lot of those charming 100 year old homes on the east coast and midwest are pre-fabricated Sears catalog homes.
  
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  - captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Is it correct to call those Sears houses “pre-fabricated?” The lumber was sawn to size if I understand right, but it still had to be stick-built on site. It’s not like it was built in pieces in a factory, trucked to the site and assembled.
    
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    SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Are IKEA dressers pre-fabricated? I would say that having plans, everything cut to size, and all the hardest parts done for you counts for a lot.
    
    For Sears catalog homes, everything in the kit was measured, cut, numbered, and packaged in a factory, including electrical and heating, and the kits were advertised as easy and fast to build for people with no expert skills. Pre-fabrication is a spectrum, and all pre-fabs require some degree of construction on site.
    
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