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Contour Crafting - Extrude-a-House 385

Posted by michael from the just-mix-and-pour dept.
lww writes "An article in New Scientist discusses the work of Behrokh Khoshnevis at the University of Southern California to design and build a fully automated robot that performs Contour Crafting, his name for a process to extrude successive layers of semi-fluid building mixtures like concrete to create entire structures. In the article, he says 'The goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home on site, in one day and without using human hands.' by 2005. I'm pretty jazzed at the potential to construct buildings with highly curved/creative contours that would be impossible using current construction techniques."
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Contour Crafting - Extrude-a-House

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  • Suburbia (Score:5, Funny)

    by shystershep ( 643874 ) * <.moc.liamg. .ta. .drehpehsdb.> on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:20PM (#8536306) Homepage Journal
    Boy, and I thought houses in housing developments were too cookie-cutter now.

    • Re:Suburbia (Score:5, Insightful)

      by namidim ( 607227 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:21PM (#8536328)
      The potential is to make them all completely different though. Just feed the robot a different model and you get a different house.

      • Re:Suburbia (Score:3, Insightful)

        by shystershep ( 643874 ) *
        The potential is there, but it's there now. It isn't the construction costs so much as the design costs that result in all the houses in a given development being identical (other that rotated 90 degrees, or mirrored).

        • Re:Suburbia (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Phurd Phlegm ( 241627 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:53PM (#8536721)
          It isn't the construction costs so much as the design costs that result in all the houses in a given development being identical (other that rotated 90 degrees, or mirrored).

          The rule of thumb is you should expect to spend 10 percent more if you're having an architect design your house. That means you'd add one percent if you made ten copies of each house. Many of said developments (generically, I call them hives) have only one to five different designs, so I wouldn't say the cost of design is in any way significant.

          The major costs as far as I know are materials, labor, and land. Oh, and profit. Eliminating much of the labor cost would be great, except the price of houses doesn't seem to go down. I suspect what you'd do is increase the cost of one of the other segments (profit, probably).

          Sure would be cool if you could getone of these gizmos from the Rent-All for the weekend and run up a new garage. I hope to see the site if it ever recovers....

          • Re:Suburbia (Score:5, Interesting)

            by phurley ( 65499 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @07:11PM (#8537990) Homepage
            You are missing a rather important point, the cookie cutter developments are generally built by crews that know them - limiting building choices increases quality (hate to see what it would be like otherwise) and decreases cost.

            Don't forget the labor involved often does not speak english natively, so that increases the savings involved in training on five plans rather than 30.

            • Re:Suburbia (Score:3, Insightful)

              by paganizer ( 566360 )
              Ahh. So that explains why the 120 year old house I grew up in seemed so flimsy and shoddy next to those hive-development houses.

              And your right, around here almost all the labor speaks american, not english.

              Building cookie cutter houses decreases cost, time to build, AND quality.
              (for those keeping track, I was in the architecture/civil engineering track from 1979-1987)

    • Re:Suburbia (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mysticalfruit ( 533341 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:26PM (#8536405) Homepage Journal
      Or it could go the other way. On your block everybodies house would be completely different.

      And that guy next door to you who has a house designed to look like a giant vagina is now reducing the resale value of your house...

    • Re:Suburbia (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
      Boy, and I thought houses in housing developments were too cookie-cutter now.

      What's to say they still will be? I find one of the worst trends in neighborhoods is houses that stand out (either they are ugly or make the rest look so). Can you imagine every house on the block looking like some artwork, worse, of different genres?

      "Turn left onto Cherryh Street and keep going until you get to the Picasso-blue-period ..."

      What's this do for builders? Go learn CNC so you can take the spec from the architec

    • Plumbing, electric, etc (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:29PM (#8536438)
      This would be nice for a home with no infratructure. How does it tie in to sewer lines, electric grids, etc? This isn't even mentioning teh internal infrastructure - all teh 14guage wiring, the three way switches, the copper feed and pvc drain pipes, etc.

      Also, how does it get all the city bureaucrats on site in one day to do all the

      This sounds like the flying cars we were all promised.

      • Re:Plumbing, electric, etc (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The sewer lines, at least, could be directly built into the walls and slab. No pipes required!

        • Re:Plumbing, electric, etc (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @05:21PM (#8537056) Journal
          The sewer lines, at least, could be directly built into the walls and slab. No pipes required!

          Uh, I'm not so sure that's a good idea. Certainly not for concrete and adobe, which are both porous to a degree. And aside from that, I'd really feel better if my sewage was passing through a completely separate system.

          Anyway, a house printer would only have to leave the relevant gaps or channels in the wall for running utilities through. Or you could just drill in. Mind you, this is just for the overall shape of the house; the interior and exterior surfaces would probably be handled separately.

      • Re:Plumbing, electric, etc (Score:5, Informative)

        by og_sh0x ( 520297 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:57PM (#8536770) Homepage
        If you go to the technical paper [usc.edu], take a look at figures 5 and 8. Now a quote from page 3 of the same paper: Utility Conduits: As shown in Figure 5 utility conduits may be built into the walls of a building structure precisely as dictated by the CAD data. Sample sections made with CC and filled with concrete as shown in Figure 8 demonstrate this possibility.

      • Re:Plumbing, electric, etc (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anm ( 18575 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @05:56PM (#8537413)
        Patent Pending. I'm serious. These guys have already thought of and nearly solved the piping and electrical infrastructure problems. But just haven't publicly unveiled it. I sat in on a talk here at USC by Dr. Khoshnevis.

        The bureaucratics issue came up also. That one is going to be very tough. In the mean time, his applied focus is on adobe house construction in rural areas and third worlds. Oh yeah, and extraterrestial buildings (assuming we can make mud on Mars/Moon).

        Anm

    • First, I will take cheap, livable housing for the masses over beautiful housing any day of the week. The inhabitants can always redecorate it later.

      Second, to my eyes, this technology allows you to build all kinds of crazy looking houses that would have had prohibitive labour costs in the original.

      A very exciting idea! I am really looking forward to this new era of computer aided fabrication technology - my alma mater, UTS, has recently purchased two Statasys 3D printers [uts.edu.au], so if those cheapskates are get

    • Re:Suburbia (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dasmegabyte ( 267018 )
      Houses look "cookie cutter" when they're new because the builders use all the same types of materials to save costs. They use "safe" colors to preserve their investment...and use a minimum of landscaping for the same reason (which is why landscaping your home is worth so much...regrading our overgrown lawn alone raised our appraisal nearly $10k).

      These features that look "cookie cutter" to you probably look equally bad to the owners. As these houses age, their owners replace parts with new ones according

  • Willlmmaaaa! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:20PM (#8536307) Homepage Journal
    At last! Now I can build the house of my dreams! [custom3dgraphics.com]

    Now, all I have to do is get Fred out of the way...

  • Matt Helm strikes again (Score:4, Informative)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:20PM (#8536317)
    Matt Helm did this in 1967 in his movie with an inflatable bedroom [badmovieplanet.com].
    • Or read a copy of "Inherit the Earth" by Stableford. It's not the main theme of the book by any means, but in it he talks about buildings being built by macines out of a liquid concrete. I don't remember how much detail he used but it sounds like the same kind of idea.

  • Thats it (Score:5, Funny)

    by An-Unnecessarily-Lon ( 761026 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:21PM (#8536320) Journal
    I am moving to Mars where they still build houses the old fashion way. Wait... what? ..... Aww crap
    • I know this is a joke but robotic labor help on other worlds will be just about essential. semi-autonomous constriction robots and humans will pave the way for the settlement of space.

  • One day? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IamGarageGuy 2 ( 687655 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:21PM (#8536324) Journal
    This may be able to construct a house in one day, but I can't see getting this gadget set up in that time. This thing is huge!

    • Re:One day? (Score:3, Informative)

      by AlecC ( 512609 )
      True. Throwing up the brickwork is one of the fastest parts of building. Usually laying in the site services and getting good foundations down take an age, then the shell appears in a trice, then fitting oudt take another age.

      I can see the machine itself being installed quickly - after its track has been carefully laid.

      The interesting bit, as the original /. post said, is the possibility to build in wierd shapes. However., after reading How Buildings Learn,, it seems thst this is not generally a good idea
      • Squares are good when you put things against walls. Curves work extremely well when things are brought away from the walls. The efficiency is reduced this way, but the "quality" of the space can be dramatically improved.

        Much of the benefit would come from things that worked well in stone, but not in stud-wall construction (or even cast-in-place concrete). Vaults and Domes seem the most obvious choice.

  • Thank god. (Score:5, Funny)

    by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:21PM (#8536335)
    At first I read that as "Extrude-a-Horse." I was picturing some unfortunate horse being turned to goo as it was extruded through a small pinhole. Ick.

  • Extrude, huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by inertia187 ( 156602 ) * on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:22PM (#8536341) Homepage Journal
    ex'trude v. ex'trud'ed, ex'trud'ing, ex'trudes
    v. tr. 1. To push or thrust out.

    Boy, the trolls are going to have a field day with this one.

  • A robot shat my house (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:23PM (#8536349)
    Would anyone ever be proud to say "a robot shat my home"? These things will likely replace trailer-houses: the Cletus Delroy's of the future can say "Hey Maw! We're movin' to a brand spankin' new droid-turd!"

  • Dunno if the article says anything about it... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:23PM (#8536357)
    But what about windows? Having really contoured surfaces dont do so well if you want to put in a window, custom glass costs a boat load....

    Not to mention they make awkward living spaces inside; it just seems that boxes work so much better in house design, although I would love curvature in the corner points in my rooms (a nice, soft, apple-like look).

    • Re:Dunno if the article says anything about it... (Score:5, Funny)

      by beacher ( 82033 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:27PM (#8536419) Homepage
      This is slashdot. Windows is a bad thing here

    • Re:Dunno if the article says anything about it... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by White Shade ( 57215 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:29PM (#8536441)
      curved corners are all well and good until you try to push your desk, bookshelf, bed or other boxy piece of furniture into the corner of your room... not all pieces of furniture (especially a bookshelf, for example) can have curvey edges in them, and you do limit your options to some extent ...

      curvey edges wouldn't do well on the floor/wall boundaries either, for the same reasons....

      curves are nice but they're not always practical.

      • curved corners are all well and good until you try to push your desk, bookshelf, bed or other boxy piece of furniture into the corner of your room... not all pieces of furniture (especially a bookshelf, for example) can have curvey edges in them, and you do limit your options to some extent ... Funny, I have the same problem trying to push my round furniture into the square corners of my stick-built house... yes, you obviously need custom furniture for your custom house, just like an airstream trailer...
    • In terms of artistic design, its far more difficult to design cohesive homes with rounded corners than you'd think. At least in my experience with other artist friends, including at least a few who hope to be architects, it seems that we human's dont really like having no clear seperation between walls.

      The other concern for me, along with your window comment, is that a significant number of conventions in room design, i.e. any picture frames, flat-screens, bookshelves, etc. are all flat-backed. You'd

    • RTFA (Score:2)

      by mekkab ( 133181 ) *
      Infact, you didn't even have to read the article; you just had to look at the purty pictures.

      Instead of giving us an insightful comment based upon the actual content of the article, you've given us so much more.

      Thanks!

    • RTFA (Score:2)

      by Greedo ( 304385 )
      Extruded doesn't mean it has to be curved.

      There is even a few [usc.edu] animations [usc.edu] of it doing a straight wall.
    • For windows and doors, even in a curved surface, you justspecify a flat flange to install them to. Still have to install them, though. Also the interior door. But what about foundations? Still gotta dig the hole and fill it with something heavy, rigid and stable. How do you tie it down to the foundation? Tie rods? You would still need rebar in the structure itself to attach the tie rods to. Here in California (and a lot of other places), you also need sufficient reinforcing in the structure itself to

  • I know a few strong guys who wouldn't like this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wizarddc ( 105860 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:23PM (#8536358) Homepage Journal
    Try getting something like this pushed past the trade unions. You might wake up with a horse head under your sheets.

  • Yeah.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:23PM (#8536362) Homepage Journal
    So it will only take a day to build a house, and with no human hands...but then, you still have to build a big gantry crane over the site, and set up the robot. This thing isn't going to do in-wall plumbing and electricity either. There would still be a LOT of work after the robot did its union minimum.
    • This thing isn't going to do in-wall plumbing and electricity either.

      Patience. This is an alpha version, if that. Rest assured that version 3.0 will do those things. (Seriously, no sarcasm.)

      Given a couple of iterations this could revolutionize home manufacturing. I'd love a highly configurable concrete house, with amenities added in later. One of my least favorite aspects of modern houses is the lack of acoustical isolation between the rooms. Concrete will have its own issues but I suspect they will be s

  • Command & Conquer (Score:3, Funny)

    by Libertarian_Geek ( 691416 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:25PM (#8536391)
    Put this on a flatbed truck, then give me a Tiberium Harvester, some Nod buggies, stealth tanks, and I'll be in business!
  • The precision automaton could revolutionise building sites. It can work round the clock, in darkness and without tea breaks.

    Exactly what construction sites has this author been visiting? I don't care if he is from the UK: construction people are NOT drinking tea in those cups.

  • Oh yeah (Score:5, Informative)

    by mskfisher ( 22425 ) * on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:28PM (#8536424) Homepage Journal
    Slashdotted.

    Fortunately, I downloaded the movies and made a BitTorrent version available:
    Enjoy.

  • Practical only for smaller structures? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lafe ( 595258 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:28PM (#8536430) Homepage
    It looks like this sort of technology is actually targeted at just the "smaller" buildings, like houses.

    It would seem that this is because it is essentially a "print-a-house" device, which will be limited by the size of the "printer" as well as the type of materials that can be used for "ink." No steel buildings here, only ceramics, some plastics, or adobe-type products.

    One thing that struck me funny is that they cited "construction of structures on Moon and Mars" as a possible application, but I simply can't see how it'd be a better option than, say, inflatables.
    • One thing that struck me funny is that they cited "construction of structures on Moon and Mars" as a possible application, but I simply can't see how it'd be a better option than, say, inflatables.

      *blink, blink*

      You're in a hostile environment, where if your structure fails you die. Period.

      Would you rather have a balloon protecting you that could be destroyed with a bullet (or high-speed rock?) or a solid structure that you really need to work to break?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • No steel buildings here, only ceramics, some plastics, or adobe-type products.

      Personally, I live in Visual Studio, but I can see that certain arty types may live in Photoshop. Is that what you meant?

  • Good news/Bad news (Score:5, Funny)

    by unassimilatible ( 225662 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:28PM (#8536434) Journal
    Good news: The printer is only $50

    Bad news: Ink cartriges are one miiiiiiiilllllon dollars! (Austin Powers voice).

  • Seems a bit redundant (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cubyrop ( 647235 )

    The video shows girders neatly and precisely arranged in preparation for the construction. The labor involved in lugging these onsite and then ordering them fussily along the ground, in addition to the laying of tracks for the giant house-plotter, would seem to be better spent actually building a real house instead of one made out of the semi-liquid gak that Hordak poured onto He-Man.
    • Hey man! Don't diss the Slime Pit! [ebay.com] That single toy is responsible for every fetishitic impulse in the United States since 1985!:)

      Also, I think the device (that the article speaks of) is marvelous but there are many other issues like it probably ushering in the end of the last well-paying joe jobs left in the US. after the construction industry is mostly gone due to this machine's more adept descendents, what then? federally mandated burger-flipper jobs...er, crap, robots will be doing that...federa

  • McHouse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jbum ( 121617 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:30PM (#8536458)
    Sure it's cool that a robot might build a house in a day, but would you really want to live in it?

    Personally, I'd rather have my house built by 100 Amish carpenters over the course of one year.

    I may be a Luddite, in this respect, but I'm also a big believer in TLC.

    - jbum
    • Yeah, but... if everything you bought were as labor intensive as housing, you wouldn't be able to buy everything you bought. Something like this is long overdue.
    • Sure it's cool that a robot might build a house in a day, but would you really want to live in it?

      Personally, I'd rather have my house built by 100 Amish carpenters over the course of one year.

      Well, me too! That would seriously kick ass, but where are you going to find Amish carpenters to come out and build things for us outsiders?

      On the other hand, I'd rather have a letter-perfect, robot-extruded, concrete house than a leaky, sagging, stick-framed wonder built by the developers around were I live.

  • This isn't new! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by C17GMaster ( 727940 )
    EBTX had this idea a long, long time ago:
    http://www.ebtx.com/mech/mech05.htm [ebtx.com]
    True, this guy didn't actually have the materials in mind, but we ought to give him credit for coming up with it first.

  • Curved contours impossible? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CanSpice ( 300894 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:32PM (#8536474) Homepage
    Negative! There's an alternative building process called cobbing [daycreek.com] that allows for free-form walls. A group called Cobworks [cobworks.com] is currently building a cob house in Mexico that's got a number of curved walls.

    Curved walls are nowhere near impossible. And placing windows in them is nowhere near impossible either. Furniture and home decoration obviously also has to be bought to fit or placed properly in rooms (i.e. no six foot long paintings hung on a curved wall).
  • The Octagon houses [romeocomp.com], domes, all kinds of shapes have been tried, but when it comes down to it, plain old right-angle planes are what really work. You can bolt things to them, modify them, cut passages through them, and make additions to them more easily than any other shape. I agree, cubes and rectangles are boring, but alas, they are what seem to work the best for real living.

    If you want to see some beautiful uses of curves and non-right-angles in architecture, check out the Walt Disney Concert Hall [musiccenter.org] in LA. It is truly beautiful, and the kind of thing which could not possibly have been built even 15 years ago because the computer modeling technology wasn't there. But that is a place you go to spend a few hours once a month, not to live there, and it was built with plenty of open space around it, not packed in like a house.

    But I think this house-creating technology is cool and I'm sure it will find uses in more spread-out areas where there is room to be creative.

    The logical next step is P2P architecture, right?

    ----------
    Make a WAP site with WAP hosting [chiralsoftware.net]

  • Framing is a small part... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cosmicpossum ( 554246 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:36PM (#8536525)
    The animation shows the machine making a framed structure on a prepared lot. Stick framing can already be done in a day (albeit with a few sets of human hands involved). The thing that takes time in building a house is the wiring, plumbing, hvac, and finishing.

    I don't see much future for this until they can automate some of these functions.

    • Yes, but (Score:5, Interesting)

      by chadjg ( 615827 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {0002elessegdahc}> on Thursday March 11, 2004 @05:00PM (#8536813) Journal
      this could completely change the way things are done. As I see it this machine could build a dog house for (a totally wild guess) $50,000, or a big honking ranch style house for $65,000. The expense is still going to be in site preparation and getting the equipment in place. No surprise, right?

      I think that once designers get a handle on what this machine can do that they will come up with ways to build houses that will seriously cut down on finish work and systems installation. What about cast in place air ducting, and cast in place conduits? Finish work would be a snap. Believe me, when you hire an experienced stucco crew you'd better be ready for them because you go to lunch and they'll have the job done before you get back. That stuff can be done a lot faster than the vapor barrier-rigid insulation, siding, paint system.

      And as far as insulation goes, what' stopping them from extruding that also? Air entrained concrete with those little expanded poly beads is great insulation! If you want to go farther, it wouldn't be hard to cast in little notches to hang interior sheating and then pump insulation behind that.

      I spent a summer with a fist full of rebar ties in one hand and a tool in the other, and it wasn't a lot of fun. If you can trade a lot of little hand labor, for a couple of days of guys with heavy equipment, it might be worth it. Who knows.

      One thing's for sure, building houses this way isn't going to be done by ma & pop construction outfits.

      My experience with concrete is very small, but this could be big, if it isn't a scam and we can get the building codes people to buy it.

  • Great (Score:3, Funny)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:37PM (#8536536) Homepage Journal
    Now the rest of the country will look like Southern California-pink, beige, and stucco.

  • Rapid prototyping (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rm007 ( 616365 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:37PM (#8536540) Journal
    This seems to be a larger version (albeit by an order of magnitudes) of the kind of technology that has been employed in rapid prototyping and model making for manufacturing an other applications for quite some time. See, for example this [azom.com] and this [calstatela.edu].

  • Slashdotted... (Score:3, Funny)

    by pragma_x ( 644215 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:38PM (#8536548) Journal
    Looks like he'll have to extrude-a-server while he's at it.

  • Dubious Value (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Wes Janson ( 606363 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:38PM (#8536549) Journal
    Whatever format this machine has, it's likely going to have to be mounted on a framework with all construction carried out inside the confines of the frame. Now, were the construction material especially fast-drying, sturdy, and lightweight, it might be economical to produce structures in a factory and haul them to location. But for anything larger than a small home, it seems likely that a portable on-site scaffolding-like frame would be necessary. I wonder what sort of calibration issues might arise from such a necessity: the temperature, stability, angle, and many other factors would all affect the construction. Sounds to me like the best idea would be to lay down a concrete floor first the conventional way, with attachment points for the machine, then bring it in, turn it on, wait, and move it on to the next site. No matter how this is done, houses are not going to be constructed in a single day: you'd still need the foundation, the flooring, the roofing, the electrical and plumbing systems, doors, paint, windows, bathroom fixtures, and a myriad of other things to all be installed. As it is, pouring concrete and constructing the walls of a house is by no means the most time-consuming part of making a new home. IANAE, but I really doubt that implementation of this technology would shorten the construction time of an average structure by more than a day or two.

  • I already have a model... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tofino ( 628530 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:40PM (#8536566)
    Can't we just feed code from Second Life into this thing?

    • Re:I already have a model... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @05:12PM (#8536960)
      > Can't we just feed code from Second Life into this thing?

      Screw that. I want to feed some M.C. Escher code into it.

      Either I get a Relatively [escher.us] sane place, or the robot turns itself inside out [escher.us] while trying to do the damned recursive stairs [escher.us]. But if the robot survives the traumatic experience, I can live in a really nice subdivision [escher.us].

      M.C. Escher + Robots. Because a man's home [escher.us] is his castle [escher.us]...

      (Cue the chameleon breaking down into tears at the sight of a piece of plaid (or a mirror!) screaming "I can't do it! I can't do it! I just can't do it!")

  • Interesting idea... for extrusions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:43PM (#8536609)
    The idea is cool for things that are extruded surfaces, but... how do you get any tinsile strength out of it? How do you put in vertical elements that are not concrete, but integrated into the structure? The site pre-casting idea is neat, but there isn't anything showing how it would stand up to seismic, or even strong wind loads. I know... work in progress.

    It's actually very close to building with stone, only you use a liquid instead.
    • This is the sort of technology that will take off once fibre composite (fibre glass, carbon fibre) design of concrete is more commonplace. It would largely make reinforcement redundant.

      (speaking as one whose working day involves lots of concrete) It may not happen this year, or the next five, but this is where concrete is likely to be headed in the next 20 years.

  • Great news for undeveloped countries (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cubyrop ( 647235 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:43PM (#8536617)

    Lug this giant pooper into a destitute region of SA or China, and lay down inexpensive shelter for an entire town. Encourage corporate sponsorship - no joke - I'm sure Pepsi wouldn't mind putting up some cash for this process, if each house built had a big pepsi logo carved into it.
    Of course, people destitute enough to live in a soft-serve house probably aren't too embroiled in the cola wars. Ebola wars, maybe.

  • A real use would be pool walls (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Engineer Andy ( 761400 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:46PM (#8536642) Journal
    The desire to have curved pool walls, which cost a fortune in concrete formwork would be where this could make in-roads if it were able to work around reinforcing steel(unreinforced concrete isn't that crash hot for any serious structural works, especially in any areas of seismicity).

    Curved walls may well look pretty, but are a nuisance to work around if you are trying to fit beds, couches, tables against them. One of the bonuses of straight walls iwth square corners.

  • It's ridiculous to pay $350-400K for a house that's built out of crappy wood by minimal-wage mexicans.
  • Let's see, the high-priced white collar jobs are going overseas, and the menial work will be done by robots. What does that leave for the rest of us? Organ donors?
  • I couldn't read the site, but it sure sounds like a big 3D printer [techsoftuk.co.uk] of some sort.

    The beauty of arbitrary construction is now I can have my dream home! [worldofescher.com]

  • A Different Use (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Percent Man ( 756972 )
    Instead of having this thing crap out fancy-schmancy concrete ugliness with many different curves, it could be greatly beneficial in the way we currently use construction robots on assembly lines: mass production. Specifically, for those unable to afford houses constructed traditionally. Think of it: Rather than sending a boatload of materials and hundreds of workers to some poor, third-world country (or impoverished urban area), just ship one or ten of these suckers out there, along with one or two operat

  • Foam Houses (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gzsfrk ( 519324 )

    Reminds me of this place. [roadsideamerica.com]

    I remember 20+ years ago touring a house constructed from a durable, high-strength foam. It was located in Gatlinburg, TN and was called "Xanadu - House of the Future". I recall that it was constructed by inflating large, plastic dome-like balloons and then spraying those balloons with the hardening foam. Builders then subsequently went in with saws and simply chopped out wherever they wanted a doorway, hall, or secret passageway to be. I remember being totally blown away when,

  • Not Just Houses (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ugmo ( 36922 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @04:58PM (#8536783)
    The same guy is working on using plastics and metal also. The main innovation is his use of the moving extruder and trowels to smooth the surface of the object.

    The moving extruder enables you to build items bigger than the tank of goo that previous laser powered rapid prototyping setups used.

    The trowels let you produce a smooth finished item. Other systems result in a stack of disks (cross sections). To minimize the stack of disks surface, you make the cross sections very very thin but this means there are thousands of cross sections and it takes a long time. With the trowels you can spit out thick tubes and smooth it out later.

    Other than houses they say you can build boats (not from adobe, duh, from plastic). Think of other smooth shells.

    When this thing goes off patent in 20 years, I can see people setting up a robot in some big commercial garage building. You create a CAD design at home and bring it down to the garage. They extrude out an item and you bring it home. You can trade designs on the internet. Someone should start an Open Source design program now to be ready with a standard file format.

    list things that would be easy to make.

    Anything big hollow and plastic, ceramic or metal:

    Plastic child's wading pool for the back yard.
    Kids play set.
    Kayaks, Canoes, snow sleds.
    Garbage cans.
    Patio Furniture
    Frisbees
    Hoola-hoops

    Custom computer case mods could get really crazy.

    Dishes or cookware?

    Think of your own. It's fun.

  • This reminds me of the concrete domes that you can build for a house. Basic dome form with poured concrete. As the structure is made with concrete, it will last a really long time. The Monolithic Domes [monolithic.com] are really cool. A simple inflatable form holds the concrete: You pour and BAM! 48 hours later you have a completed structure!

  • Now I need another euphemism for pooping! (Score:5, Funny)

    by csoto ( 220540 ) on Thursday March 11, 2004 @05:16PM (#8536998)
    Man, don't go in the bathroom! I just "extruded a house."

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