DyM Podcast

Every time that I think about housing and how can I afford to buy a house in the Future, a lot of ideas and challenges strike my mind. Even in Germany due to Inflation, It’s not cheap at all to afford to purchase a house or an apartment. One should think about investing or getting credit to be able to buy a house in 20 Years or try to pay the debt to the Bank monthly from his Income. In recent years few companies have tried innovative ideas to reduce the cost, energy, labor and to increase efficiency. These companies have applied robotic solutions to create to print the 3D walls with Composite or Beton materials to create the structure in a fraction of the time. Below is the list of these top 10 companies:

1– Icon

2– Apis Cor

3– contour crafting

4– Cobod

5– Construction 3D

6– Cybe

7– Mighty building

8– Black Buffalo 3D

9– Wasp

10–Xtree

In the Podcast Video i have throuly introduced these companies and the solution that they have offerd, however in General i see some Negative and positive aspect (Pros vs Cons) Of a 3D printed house which i would like to share them with you.

Pros:

1– Cheaper: Of course it is cheaper to build a 3D printed house. You mainly need to invest on the ground field and also the fee that the Contractor requires which can be up to 4x less than a normal and conventional building construction.

2– Faster: Printing a building is fast and printing a house with 60 sq living space, one floor and 1 bed room

could only last 6 days with out pausing. (In reality it takes longer)

3– Less man power: Its obvious that automating the building construction can reduce tremendously the required man powered, however the need of high skilled workers increases.

4– Using Bio Material and less Waste: It depends on the company’s decision on the type of material to be used for printing, however, based on what I have learned they try to use a combination of biomaterial- Fiber and a special type of beton. Some Companies have a material science research department to discover and develop the most suitable one with enough durability and drying time for Beton is shorter. Among these companies that I have mentioned, mighty Building uses composite and epoxy materials to build the walls. It has 4x times more tensile strength than Beton and is much lighter to transport.

5– Easy to set up: The process of Setting up the robots is fast forward and can be done in a certain routin and is not complicated

Cons:

1– Outlook: I do not like unsmooth walls with layers by layer beton on top of each other. Maybe I am not used to such scenery, however, the look is not my favorite. Most of the time, companies use Wood Panels to hide the walls as a cover, especially in the kitchen or living room, to make the look more elegant, which adds up to the cost.

2- Strength: A strong Blow to a 3D printed House made of Beton could cause a big crack in the wall. This makes the tensile strength questionable. Its the main reason that is recommened not to use a drill machine in hammer mode when drilling a hole in a 3D printed wall! It can cause a big crack an the wall!

3– High rise buildings: So far most of the examples of 3D- printed Buildings are only one-story buildings and there are some rare examples of two-story Buildings. There is a limitation probably due to the limitation of strength or Regulation.

4- Size Limitation: The space of the buidling is limited to the limitation of the Construction robots. Of course The Ganty-based robots could be costumized for each individual House, however this will add up the Project cost.

5- Regulation: Each country has its building Standard regulations. 3D printed houses require a new definition of standard which for countries like Germany due to the bureaucratic regulation could take up to years.

6- Availability: Since it’s a new way of construction, only a limited of companies are available to provide services and it can take years to reserve a construction. Hopefully, this will change in the future 😉

If you have Question Regarding the each type of the Robots, I would be happy to answer that. I hope you find this Episode Useful 🙂