3D printed houses: a different kind of tiny house

Currently, the real estate market is short on inventory. Do not fear. Technology is coming to the rescue. All you need is $10,000, a couple of days, a few friends, and a special printer. That’s what the San Francisco-based company Apis Cor did with a partner in Russia earlier this year. And voila! A house, market- ready, except for inspections. Or check out the tiny house built by college student Alex Le Roux in Houston, Texas in June, 2016. Not to mention a host of structures built around the world ranging from bridges to cabins to office buildings to Shorewood, MN’s own backyard castle. And, best of all, you do not have to be a 2D cartoon character to live in them. The magic is in the printer. See more.

The printer used to build these real life structures is not your standard office printer. Traditional printers use toner or ink to print on paper or similar two dimensional materials. 3D printers are less like printers and more like manufacturing machines with robotic arms. This duplication process is known as additive manufacturing, a concept born in the 1980s, but one that has come into its own in the last decade. The early models indeed were desktop machines that used computer programs to guide the layering process using plastics or metal materials to form three dimensional models. The technology has developed across many industries since then using many different materials to manufacture small to very large products.

More recent applications of this technology has led inventive people like Italian civil engineer Enrico Dini to create a 3D printer capable of printing an entire house and Minnesotan contractor Andrey Rudenko to customize his 3D printer to extrude concrete according to his needs. It allowed him to alter size and smoothness and accommodate detail as had not been previously available. And, with all of this, it can be done faster, with less waste, cost and manpower than traditional methods. To see Rudenko’s castle and other printed structures go here. Change is coming. How to print a house.

Credit: Apis Cor

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