It seems the relative advantages of additive ("3d") manufacturing and construction are so great that they will eventually become the dominant form, especially as they flatten out the supply and labor chain.
My understanding is that the advantages are pretty minor, if it's not actually a net negative. This only replaces the framing step of the construction, which is pretty quick anyway, plus maybe the application of the interior and exterior paint/stucco/whatever if the owners are cool with the "raw" 3D-printed appearance. I'm not sure I would be, even though it's admittedly kind of cool looking--how the hell are you supposed to hang a picture on that?
The foundation, roof, electrical, plumbing, cabinetry, etc. still have to be done the old fashioned way, and together those constitute the majority of the construction effort.
An interesting thing from the article is the claim that it can build the walls of a house in three weeks, which is supposedly 30% less than it takes to do it using traditional methods (though I suspect the traditional figure includes some type of pre-finishing like drywall and Tyvek, which you don't get with this). Part of the reason this thing is faster is because it runs around the clock, which human framers can't do because of noise ordinances. But it still needs a crew to monitor it. That crew may consist of fewer people at any given time, but it has to be paid 24 hours a day, which makes me think the human labor savings are not as great as they might appear.
Comments
It seems the relative advantages of additive ("3d") manufacturing and construction are so great that they will eventually become the dominant form, especially as they flatten out the supply and labor chain.
My understanding is that the advantages are pretty minor, if it's not actually a net negative. This only replaces the framing step of the construction, which is pretty quick anyway, plus maybe the application of the interior and exterior paint/stucco/whatever if the owners are cool with the "raw" 3D-printed appearance. I'm not sure I would be, even though it's admittedly kind of cool looking--how the hell are you supposed to hang a picture on that?
The foundation, roof, electrical, plumbing, cabinetry, etc. still have to be done the old fashioned way, and together those constitute the majority of the construction effort.
An interesting thing from the article is the claim that it can build the walls of a house in three weeks, which is supposedly 30% less than it takes to do it using traditional methods (though I suspect the traditional figure includes some type of pre-finishing like drywall and Tyvek, which you don't get with this). Part of the reason this thing is faster is because it runs around the clock, which human framers can't do because of noise ordinances. But it still needs a crew to monitor it. That crew may consist of fewer people at any given time, but it has to be paid 24 hours a day, which makes me think the human labor savings are not as great as they might appear.
That's a very good point that the 30 percent savings are for round the clock work. I didn't notice that in the article.