Technology

It really feels like the wrong technology for the job.

What 3D printing is great at is having one machine, that can produce a billion different parts.

i.e. with my one printer, I can print hooks, or replacement parts that no longer exist or custom organizer that fit exactly my stuff and situation.

It's fantastic for printing a massive variety of low volume parts / one offs.

It's not great at printing those things cheaply, or in modular parts (it can be done but it's often not because it's a lot of extra effort for one offs). Which in housing, people want cheap (because it's the most expensive thing they'll buy), and they want it to be adaptable and changeable.

If anything I suspect an actual housing revolution could come from pre-fab housing, made of a highly customizable and modular component system, and slick design software, but no one has cracked all the pieces required to implement that yet.

The video isn't really about 3D printing houses, it's mostly about corruption, scams, grifters, con artists, burocracy and idiots. It uses a very ominous tone that is very emotionally appealing and click-baity. What it has to say about actual 3D printing houses is very little:

One house had cracks, concrete is hard. 3D printing with clay takes a week to dry, that is soooo long. Concrete produces so much CO2!!! Where are the regulations!? But they also invented carbon neutral concrete and are experimenting with new binders and aggregates. They 3D printed a 2 story house in earthquakey japan, but OH MY GOD it's inspired by a cave! I CAVE!!! Who wants to live in a CAVE?!?!?

A video like this is using the same type of emotional manipulation to feed the algorithm and engagement like the grifters in their example do. It's disgusting to me.

3D printing houses has huge potential, it's just in it's infancy, and maybe not well suited to develop in the capitalist housing market. There are breakthroughs to control less precise robotics, self driving and SLAM that will allow this to be even cheaper and more flexible. Building materials to develop and software and tools to develop. Just look at plastic 3D printers and how they were held back for years by patents and capitalist interests.

The potential is there to not just 3D print rough structures, but intricately painted and sculpted beautiful structures... out of literal dirt on site. With new binders we could make use of local materials instead of transporting sand across the world. And not just one house, but a whole village for e.g. the millions of refugees from natural catastrophes we can expect over the next century.

There is an obvious potential for further automization, like have a robot dig holes and 3D print foundations, save on transportation costs, use new materials, circumvent long and exploitative industrial supply chains for building materials, print foam insulation. Have different "robot end effectors" to insert wiring and piping while printing, or place structural elements for roofing. Even a hybrid approach between 3D printing and brick laying could be useful. Scan a quarry of a million natural stones and puzzle them together.

Don't just 3D print the framing, but finish and paint the walls too. And 3D print the kitchen and cabinet furniture and bathroom including shower and bathtub too. 3D printing the walls is just the beginning of the potential. And tearing down and systematically sorting and recycling all individual parts of a house at the other end of the lifecycle.

We should fund a whole university focused on this technological area as a mega project to solve housing once and for all through maximum automation. Making housing free and a universal right for everyone should be the goal.

Sounded like a cool idea at the time, at least they tried something new!

That sucks, I had hoped this would work better as it seemed very efficient/quick. I don't think this is damning of all pre fab homes though, as they are really common especially in Europe.