A few days ago, upon receiving a report on the first modular house built by a 3D printer (with biodegradable materials) in the USA, I wondered how relevant this news was in the paradigm shift facing the construction industry.
This sector has been using 3D printers for some time. From humble beginnings, in the mid-1980s, when designers created a pattern that was then printed layer by layer on a physical object (using a laser aimed at liquid photopolymer to make it solid, a process known as “stereolithography – SLA”), the use of those printers have come a long way.
At the beginning of the 2000s, the Autodesk company presented a “White paper” entitled “Building Information Modeling (BIM)” which, collecting the research work of previous decades, defines the holistic process of creating and managing information for a built asset, “based on an intelligent model and enabled by a cloud platform”.
This model “integrates structured and multidisciplinary data to produce a digital representation of an asset throughout its life cycle, from planning and design to construction and operations.”
In 2006, the University of Southern California (USA) presented the “Contour Craft System (CCS)”, with a printer that works like the one we have on our desk, using a crane to print and concrete to place the structural elements of the building. MIT (USA) practices 3D printing using a large, controllable robotic arm to spray materials, such as concrete, through traditional construction nozzles.
In the mid-2010s, projects by Dutch companies appeared. One of them uses a giant printing arm to build a typical canal side house out of plastic. Another prints a fully functional stainless steel bridge and places it over one of Amsterdam’s oldest and most famous canals, using multi-axis printing (MX3D) technology.
In those years, an American company associated with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (of the US Department of Energy) to produce efficient modular homes printed in 3D with a combination of renewable energy and natural gas systems.
The Chinese also unveil their projects around the same time. They announce the “printing” of a two-story mansion in 45 days and 10 houses in 24 hours.
Since 2018, numerous projects have proliferated. Apis Cor, BatiPrint, Black Buffalo 3D, COBOD, Constructions 3D, Contour Crafting, Cybe Construction, Icon, Mighty Buildings, Mud Bots, SQ4D, Wasp, XtreeE, are some of the companies that carry them out.
In 2021, the Eindhoven University of Technology’s “Milestone Project” (Netherland) delivered the first of 5 houses it plans to build in the city, with an energy coefficient of 0.25, considered highly efficient.
Although the number of projects is constantly growing, is clear that 3D printing is not yet mainstream in the construction industry. However, the projections for the coming years seem to indicate that we are steadily heading towards a tipping point.
Different reports indicate that the use of BIM among architects is constantly growing and could cover 80 or 90% of their projects by 2024. Similar percentages are reported for the use of BIM among structural and civil engineers by the same year. Among contractors the estimated percentage of current BIM use of around 40% could grow to 70% of the projects they work on by 2024.
The differences in the perceived return on investment in the different branches of construction (architects, engineers or contractors) explain the reported projections, so that greater help to understand and use BIM among professionals could increase the perceived return and its use.
The house built in Maine, by the Research Group of the Center for Advanced Structures and Composites (ACSS), of the University of that State, which led me to write these lines, is called BioHome3D and consists of 4 modules.
The walls, floor and ceiling are made of wood fiber and biosmol. The house is highly insulated and recyclable and only took 12 hours to build. Gagadget.com reports that it took a single electrician two hours to hook up the power.
Some point out that 3D printed houses could be a solution to reduce the cost of housing and pollution from the construction industry. Considering the speed at which new applications are developed in this industry, it is possible that we will have much more news to stimulate us to write again in the next 5 years.
