Shanghai Company 3D Prints 6-Story Apartment Building and Villa 98
ErnieKey writes Last year, a Shanghai based company made news by 3d printing a bunch of houses. Now that same company, WinSun has accomplished something never seen before. They have successfully 3d printed a 6-story apartment building as well as an incredibly detailed home. The structures were unveiled at the Suzhou Industrial Park. "These two houses are in full compliance with the relevant national standards," Ma Rongquan, the Chief engineer of China Construction No.8 Engineering Bureau, explained. "It is safe, reliable, and features a good integration of architecture and decoration. But as there is no specific national standard for 3D printing architecture, we need to revise and improve such a standard for the future."
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According to Boko Haram, all it takes to destroy Islam is traditional printing on paper.
TFA says 5 stories high (Score:2)
And yet summary says 6...
Re:TFA says 5 stories high (Score:4, Funny)
well you can stand on the roof
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Re:TFA says 5 stories high (Score:5, Informative)
And yet summary says 6...
One of TFA says 5 stories and the other FA says 6 stories. I guess it all depends on how you like to count. But I am going with 5 stories as that is the number of windows high the apartment block is, and that particular FA seems to be the more authoritative one.
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Note that usage of "floor/story count" for buildings varies from place to place.
As an example, in the USA, the ground floor counts, while in Europe only the floors/stories above ground floor count.
Don't know how they count such things in China, and don't know whether there were typos in TFA or /. summary, so further deponent sayeth not.
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Indeed, in the UK the first floor is on the floor above the ground floor, whilst in the US it is the ground floor.
However the ground floor is still counted towards the total number of storeys in the building in both places.
The picture is of a five storey building, unless there is a smaller construction on the top (lift shaft housing does not count).
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As an example, in the USA, the ground floor counts, while in Europe only the floors/stories above ground floor count.
You have differentiate between numbering (naming) the floors and counting the numbers of floors in a building.
A five storey building is a five storey building, but some number the floors from floor 1 to floor 5, others count ground floor, 1st floor, 2nd floor...
Also, not all of Europe is the same. Here in Germany we have both variants, depending on region and design of the buildings.
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I don't measure my buildings based on how many floors they have, I measure them based on how many bathrooms they have. How many bathrooms does this 3-D printed building have?
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Note that usage of "floor/story count" for buildings varies from place to place
Nope. The naming does, but the count doesn't. In my end of the world the first floor is the lowest you can get (unless there is a basement) but in the UK, the first floor is my second floor. We'd not disagree on the number of floors though.
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Are we starting from 0 or 1?
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And it sank into the swamp...
you can't print 3D books! (Score:5, Funny)
and how will that standard be published and disseminated?
2D printers sigh with relief, they are still relevant
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and how will that standard be published and disseminated?
2D printers sigh with relief, they are still relevant
Only until they find out how crap Chinese building standards are!
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Of course you can - in Braille.
Is it really inexpensive? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure it seems cheap, but have you seen the prices on the refill cartridges? Outrageous!
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Wait until the first windy day until you see the real costs.
I can see the 2019 headlines now:
Come visit the 3D Printed Tower of Pisa!
Re:Is it really inexpensive? (Score:4, Funny)
And just try to clear a rebar jam.
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Re:Is it really inexpensive? (Score:5, Informative)
From the text and what few pictures of the actual construction material they show, it looks like they basically print it with voids specifically for skewering it with rebar on-site.
Now, whether or not you trust the final assembler to actually *do* so and then backfill the voids with some sort of mortar so the rebar actaully has something to stick to... Well, we'll find out in the first big earthquake they get, I suppose.
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You honestly think in 2 seconds you can identify a problem that a bunch of guys, who've spent years developing a technology, haven't considered, let alone addressed? Read the article, it only takes you 2 other seconds.
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Because the world is perfect and none of our code ever had bugs or design flaws? And people never hype their crap, actively mislead and deceive us?
No one 3D printed a house (Score:5, Insightful)
This is simply a way to cast concrete in a factory and then wheel the parts to the construction site.
You still need to add all the plumbing, wiring, windows, doors, flooring, etc...
Settle down with the hyperbole already.
It's not any different from using factory-trimmed wood or pre-cast concrete steps.
But just say "3D printing" and the mindless hype starts and brains turn off everywhere.
Re:No one 3D printed a house (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair enough assessment. However I'd like to see you frame a house, sheet it, roof it, drywall it, put siding on, trim it, for under $4800.
For that price, I don't necessarily think this is just "mindless hype".
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Re:No one 3D printed a house (Score:5, Informative)
"Although, most of the cost of buying a house has more to do with procuring the land then it does with the actual cost of building it."
In the US, in 99% of the country, this is not the case. The land is fairly cheap. I've owned homes in NJ and FL. NJ is the most densely populated state. In both cases, the land was valued at about 5%-10% of the total value of the home. Even in the case where the property was on a pond on the 18th hole of a golf course.
"Might make sense in some places where cost of land is quite low. Although in many of those places, the infrastructure for building the "house factory" and transporting the house to the site would be the major problem to solve."
Also in the US, there are a good number of "pre-manufactured" home companies that already transport homes in sections to their final location. My sister has one.
And I'm not talking about "mobile homes". http://www.allamericanhomes.co... [allamericanhomes.com]
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Fair enough assessment. However I'd like to see you frame a house, sheet it, roof it, drywall it, put siding on, trim it, for under $4800.
For that price, I don't necessarily think this is just "mindless hype".
It might be interesting to know what $4800 USD is actually worth there in China, adjusted for 'cost of' doing whatever in China vs. the cost of doing it in the US, and making your comparison with that.
Re:No one 3D printed a house (Score:4, Informative)
You've never seen manufactured housing (aka mobile homes)? That do that all the time, and delivery it right to your site ready to be hooked into the power grid and water/sewer.
Don't like mobile homes? Try a modular home. Built in a factory with all the bits complete but in shipable-size pieces, assembled on site.
Still too much? there are a dozen different panelization technologies that will send you prefabricated parts you just screw or connect together.
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The same thing would probably cost $48,000 in the U.S.
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In the US, the concrete alone is more than that.. still sitting in the bags or trucks.
Let's remember this was done as a stunt in China, where they build entire freakin' cities that no one lives in.
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Well, it is "3D printing", albeit fairly coarse printing of large scale components. It's still a lot faster and cheaper (lower manpower requirements) than the alternative.
Also the "printer" can do the work on-site (eventually), so there's no need for the factory aspect. It can print the components for an entire house within a day. Assembly is cheaper than construction. It might not be printing a finished house, but to expect that would be silly right now.
As for finishing the walls, most houses require a pla
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You still need the factory to make the filament? And the factory to make the printer? Still a lot of factors involved.
Re:No one 3D printed a house (Score:4, Informative)
What caught me was the claim that they printed it all in a day. Concrete of any quality quick-drying fast enough to sustain the weight of a whole building, vertically? Really?
No, of course not.
They're only talking about the walls, and they're making them off site. The same process is used for any prefab concrete structure. What upholds their claim that they're using 3-D printing comes in that they can make any combination of shapes quickly and easily, without the need for a custom mold or form. Instead of setting all that up, it's just computer controlled - thus the actual gain, an 80% reduction in labor.
As others have noted though, we only have the company's word that it's safe. It doesn't seem like it has an internal rebar framework, or anything to sufficiently replace it ...
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The article shows an internal picture of the post-install inserted rebar and concrete pour into the wall.
Also the plan would be for a printer to be installed on-site to do the printing of the components.
I think the buildings should be subjected to strength tests of course, before taking their word for it.
It's still a potential step forward in one aspect of house building.
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My Father regularly 3-D Printed structures 20 years ago. You start with a foundation that you fill with concrete. You then put up boards a foot wide all around matching the structure you want to build and fill them with concrete. When that is set and dry, you move the boards up and fill the next level, and so on and so on, making a solid concrete structure layer by layer.
What is being described here is a pre-fabricated building being assembled, not 3-D printing houses or apartments.
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Indeed it is quite a shame that they didn't take the opportunity to show off these capabilities with these very boxy buildings!
However ultimately buildings are going to have straight edges and not many curves, so a capability for curved structures may not be as useful as it first sounds. On the other hand I'm not an architect full of curved wall ideas thwarted by straight wall building practices...
But half the cost and half the time (and not using loads of wood) is certainly useful.
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Why do you assume buildings will always have straight edges? Recto-linearity seems to largely be a feature incorporated for ease of construction. Consider:
* The only shape tree trunks come in reliably is "straight" - any curvature will be extremely difficult to match.
* Any sort of stacked-block construction (stone, adobe, etc) needs to be capable of tesselating consistently so that subsequent tiers follow the same line: rectangles are by far the easiest shape to create consistently, and they only lay prop
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Pretty big, but not ridiculous. You bring in the printer components on the back of a flatbed truck, assemble it over the construction plot, and then just keep the cement pumping until you're done. Lot's of designs out there, and a few implementations.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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This is fundamentally new if and only if the printing is being done in multiple materials at once. Otherwise, it's just fast assembly of components printed elsewhere.
A small-scale way of putting this is, when will we be able to print, in one operation, a usable baseball?
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A baseball is made of a variety of different materials - a concrete or cob house, not so much. You can realistically print an entire house frame out of just concrete - walls, roof, and conduit. You still need to hang windows, blow in insulation, install plumbing, and pull wiring to make it into a house most Westerners would want to live in - but the structure itself, and hence a majority of labor, can be all one material, printed on site.
Certainly being able to print in multiple materials will open up new
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Actually, for pretty much any sort of concrete construction you're going to have to finish the walls anyway - and the ridges seen here should hold a good layer of plaster far more firmly than a smooth(ish) wall would. And if it really bothers you there are also other concrete printers out there that include a troweling mechanism to deliver a much smoother wall - this technology is still in it's infancy after all, let the folks working on practical usage and cost-effectiveness focus on that aspect for now.
For a sufficiently low value of "printed" (Score:5, Interesting)
The printed part is a concrete skeleton that acts as a form that needs to cure and then be filled with concrete. None of the finishing work is printed. It is basically a cast-concrete structure, where the typical metal forms were replaced with a 3D-printed skeleton. Of course the printed skeleton is a couple orders of magnitude rougher than what you'd get with metal forms, so the walls need heavy finishing before they can be presentable.
What they've done is perhaps a step in the right direction, but they are very, very far from truly 3D-printing an entire building. First of all, they'll need to have an inline concrete mixer that can continuously mix a fast-curing mix, so that they could print shapes that are filled-in. They also need to change the shape of the nozzle so that the deformed (compressed) shape will be rectangular, and not oval as it is now. They really did everything without much thought or understanding of what it takes to do it right. It is, at best, cargo cult 3D printing. They did all the right moves without understanding what it really takes to do it.
Re:For a sufficiently low value of "printed" (Score:5, Insightful)
they are very, very far from truly 3D-printing an entire building
has anyone actually stated that as a goal, or are you getting hung up on semantics?
They did all the right moves without understanding what it really takes to do it.
I think you misunderstand more things than they do. Beside missing the intentions and goals, like above, you don't seem to understand that no matter how clean you can the printed structural wall, nobody will be satisfied with it and throw up sheetrock or paneling. The difference between doing that on a perfectly smooth wall and one with a finish like this is trivial if you have a package of shims. This tech enables a smaller factory to create a greater variety of precast structures and brings the setup cost to custom or low volume structural pieces down to the cost of design and eliminate much of the cost of equipment and setup of manufacturing such pieces.
It also lowers the entry level to producing premaufactured modular structures. Give me the print head and printing material and I, as well a quite a large number of hobbyists, can build the 3-axis CNC and get Open Source software to run it. Give me an architectural engineer, some laborers and a forklift or two and the plant is ready to roll with production.
3D printing in general has gone down a lot of wrong paths (like one of the main goals being able to print more printers) but when you treat it as part of the manufacturing process (rather than having the fantasy or ordering "Tea Earl Grey Hot") it's a step forward in our ability to produce as a society.
Sure, it need further development, but not only is it a step in the right direction, it is a step with the forethought and understanding of how this technology could effectively be used in the real world in the foreseeable future.
structure (Score:3)
While they're "printing" concrete I'm wondering how the bonding between layers holds up. This looks like an automated shotcrete system to me which isn't great for ultimate structural integrity at least from what the photos show. They don't show substantial reinforcement in some of the photos in the article I'd be concerned about cracks and delamination between the layers during earthquakes or over time with general changes in temperature and humidity. I don't see how this is revolutionary since laid up concrete walls are being used all over the world in houses, apartments and warehouses worldwide. The guys come out, lay out forms, put in the reinforcement and do a continuous poor. Sure this may save on labor ultimately and the reinforcement could be pre-fabbed as well, so it may ultimately drive down costs.
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Even the tropics get freezing temps. I'm not a construction guy but those walls looked really rough in their finish. Leads me to think that unless that is rectified they may have moisture/mold problems.
That has a different meaning there (Score:2)
These two houses are in full compliance with the relevant national standards
National standards in China are not what they are in most western nations. If manufacturing standards are what were applied these buildings could have been printed with asbestos and leaded paint (amongst other things that would not be allowed here) and the structural rigor of the design and material might well not be what would be viewed as acceptable here.
That said, it is a good start. Now if we could 3d print a house that is safe for human occupation, that would be an even more significant step.
Don't forget to add the melamine! (Score:1)
Now watch the Americans (Score:1)
come in and slag it, because it's amazing and it was made by someone else.
Dont trust these at all. (Score:4, Informative)
it's not 3d printed concrete. it's 3d printed mortar. It's not strong stuff. I have seen some of the US based building prints and I am not impressed at all. On top of this nobody has done any seismic testing or other stability testing on any of the builds.
I believe it has potential, but not yet, and honestly building plywood forms and doing a pour over a welded reinforcement rod system is far far stronger than this. Plus they need a way to set in electrical and plumbing during the build process.
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Using a machine which measures a staggering 20 feet tall, 33 feet wide and 132 feet long, the team at WinSun started with a basic CAD drawing which they fed to the massive 3D printer that was able to fabricate the structure piece-by-piece using a specially formulated and patented ‘ink’. The ink, which includes construction waste such as concrete, fiberglass, sand, and a special hardening agent, is an incredible way to recycle general construction materials — not to mention it is flexible, self-insulating, and resistant to strong earthquakes
Of course, this is recycled PR that might not be entirely truthful. The recycling of construction waste is a nice sounding feature. So it isn't the same printing material as the US based housing prints.
The company then placed beam columns and steel rebar within the walls, along with insulation, reserving space for pipe lines, windows and doors.
So there is still some manual work involved.
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it's not 3d printed concrete. it's 3d printed mortar.
Actually it's not even that. It's 3D printed concrete forms, which are then shipped to the site, plumbed, wired, and filled with concrete.
Champion (Score:4, Insightful)
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We have to change SS, get rid of the antiquated working until you're 65 bullshit (not if we live so much longer); stop paying people to have kids they can't afford or raise - and start thinking about providing the basics of human existence (food and shelter) while not encouraging a generation of gim
Same problem as plastic printing (Score:2)
The actual commercial potential appears to have the same issue that 3D plastic printing does vs injection molding. Basically the cost of a mold is really not that expensive when you are making thousands of parts, and the production speed difference is just phenomenal.
But sure, if the resolution was better I can imagine this being used for one-off or low volume boutique architectural projects where the part volume does not justify the cost of making pre-cast formwork.
Maybe another decade and some material br
Contour Crafting... (Score:1)
...for concrete structures printed in place [contourcrafting.org]. The ability to print curved walls also makes the finished structures very resilient to earthquakes and such.
Excellent (Score:1)
comes in handy (Score:2)
It may comes in handy and cheaper when one is to "print" a house in a remote location: arctic, remote islands, etc.
No standard? (Score:2)
But as there is no specific national standard for 3D printing architecture, we need to revise and improve such a standard for the future.
Um, why would the standards be any different than those already in place for any building? Just becuase it was "3D printed" doesn't mean we should change our standards, does it?
Error (Score:2)
PC LOAD LINTEL
Pictures of the printer? (Score:2)
Seem to be a distinct lack of them, a bit surprising.
print waht? (Score:1)
Pics or it didn't happen.
They can 3D print a house, but.... (Score:1)
China Doesn't Want You to Know (Score:1)
http://www.chacha.com/gallery/... [chacha.com]