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Chinese Firm Reveals World's First 3D-Printed Five Story Apartment Building
While China's stock market continues levitating at an ever more amusing pace, this is happening at the expense of China's far more important housing market, which sadly for three-quarters of China's population (in the US 75% of household assets are in financial products, in China: in real estate) continues to deflate at a rate faster than US housing in the aftermath of Lehman. And for better or worse, Chinese home prices are likely set to drop even more, and not due to something as arcane as glitches in fiscal or monetary policy, but something far more tangible: technological advances, and specifically - 3D printed houses.
Meet WinSun: the Chinese company has been documented to print 10 complete houses in 24 hours, using a proprietary 3D printer that uses a mixture of ground construction and industrial waste, such as glass and tailings, around a base of quick-drying cement mixed with a special hardening agent. But while this in itself is impressive, the punchline is the cost: the houses can be produced for under $5,000, which means that if adopted widely, 3D printing can lead to a collapse in prices of new home construction across China, which while good for new buyers could be catastrophic for the economy and the banking sector where nearly $30 trillion in commercial loans are collateralized almost entirely by China's overinflated housing sector.
Not content with building single-family houses (and WinSun's own office), WinSun recently made history when it demonstrated the world's first entirely 3D-printed five-story apartment building and a 1,100 square metre (11,840 square foot) villa, complete with decorative elements inside and out, on display at Suzhou Industrial Park.
According to CNET, while the company hasn't revealed how large it can print pieces, based on photographs on its website, they are quite sizeable and ornate. A CAD design is used as a template, and the computer uses this to control the extruder arm to lay down the material "much like how a baker might ice a cake," WinSun said. The walls are printed hollow, with a zig-zagging pattern inside to provide reinforcement. This also leaves space for insulation.
This process saves between 30 and 60 percent of construction waste, and can decrease production times by between 50 and 70 percent, and labour costs by between 50 and 80 percent. In all, the villa costs around $161,000 to build.
And, using recycled materials in this way, the buildings decrease the need for quarried stone and other materials -- resulting in a construction method that is both environmentally forward and cost effective.
WinSun hopes to use its technology on much larger scale constructions, such as bridges and even skyscrapers, which means this is just the beginning of not only conveyer houses, but of massive price deflation across China's housing market, which judging by the relentless plunge in Chinese inflation and the hard landing the local economy has found itself in, may have come at the worst possible time.
In conclusion, one can only hope that WinSun "Quality Control" checklist is a little broader than some of its Chinese peers whose rush to the finish, often times leads to unfortunate consequences.
h/t Keith
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Don't worry. Even if this can be shown to build rugged, lasting civil infrastructure on the cheap, we can rest assured no government will ever issue you the permits required to build one on your own property.
Well, not if it reduces the square footage of your property where rain can hit the soil or if it casts a shadow, no.
here go construction jobs..
Printed houses? What will they do next print MONEY????
Oh wait....
3-D printed buildings? Hardly. Only in the minds of the marketing deparment.
It's pre-manufactured concrete slabs with textured decorative coatings sprayed on. That's it - that's the only 3-D part. It's a pre-fab concrete building with fake brick texture. BFD.
You still need to build a foundation, frame and mount all the slabs to it. With a crane. No giant 3-D printer anywhere in the area. If you dispense with the crappy fake brick or marble texture, you can 2-D print your own shack in ten minutes like this: go down to the local cement plant, get a few dozen pre-formed slabs and assemble. The 2-D printing part is 40 gallons of latex paint and a paint sprayer. No alien technology or other dimensions required.
Printed houses? What will they do next print MONEY????
Ha! Yellen is laughing her fat ass off!
Technology, what is it good for? Oh that's right, profiteering w/o high labor cost...
What will they print next?
People who can afford to live in them.
$5k
Current pre-fab construction methods are far superior to 3D printing. Because many components are manufactured off site, different stages of construction can be performed in parallel. 3D printing, on the other hand, is a sequential process. Additionally, concrete by itself would not be able to support floors and overhangs. Different materials and construction methods are required to build large and complex structures. The Chinese building couldn't have been built without utilizing pretty much all of the conventional techniques.
With plastic printing the process can be expedite by controlling the filament temperature. With concrete a printer would have to go only as fast as the bonding allows, which is very very slow, considering you're squeezing 50-100 layers per floor.
Matter of time.
Land prices should rise and housing prices will fall especially if you can shop at say Walmart for a "Print-Your-Own House" model.
"With concrete a printer would have to go only as fast as the bonding allows, which is very very slow" Wrong, they use fast drying cement mix - watch the video!
It's pretty obvious that the next step is to take the printer to site, plug it in and press the print button.
If they don't already have a working prototype that can do this, you can be damned sure that they will be working on it right now... This is the bell tolling for the construction industry. If you're in it, either get on board with 3d printed houses or get out of the business before you're forced out.
You're talking about what the Chinese company has done which seems to be a hybrid, 3D printing in the factory and assembling on site. If you care to look, this is not just concrete slabs.
Contour Crafting (actual 3D on-site building printing) has been around for a few years. I don't know why they are pissing around with NASA contracts and worrying about how to bury electrical cable runs in the walls instead of immediately commercializing on cheaply framed houses. Update: Damned academics.
So, what will all the new 'citizens' do? Go home?
did you even watch the video? :P it still requires a lot of construction workers to put all the Legos together :D
Should I go long Elmer's?
You nailed in....in America, no modern techniques will be allowed. Legacy construction techniques/methods are hardcoded into the permitting/inspection processes.
Home depot even sells "sheds" for a few thousand dollars that would be awesome for some dude who is "homeless". Sorry, not in America...not allowed. If you can't afford a big mortagage to funnel money to Manhattan, then you don't deserve any shelter in America.
Millions of homeless families, millions of unoccupied homes.
Only in America - or the USSR.
Millions of homes are also occupied by people who ceased to pay their mortgages, insurance and taxes years ago:
http://www.zillow.com/visuals/negative-equity/#6/40.764/-74.004
As are ordinances and covenants. It is crucial to make obtaining shelter as stressful as possible. Otherwise people might have enough time to organize against the govt.
Yep. It's very difficult to build small houses due to code requirements -- the small house people bitch about this all the time. Many have to employ creative workarounds, like building the home on a trailer bed, the circumvent the rules.
I find it amusing that in most areas you couldn't legally build homes the size that an average contemporary citizen lived in at the time of the US was founded.
Back in the 80s an australian yacht builder put together some prefab houses (carbon fiber maybe?) that he said could be built for under $5k each and given his background they passed just about every test for fire, termites, water, cyclones etc equal to or better than brick houses. As you can imagine his plans were quickly blocked by the government and never heard of again.
Then there were the hurricane proof pre-fab metal ones. Quite nice, there's one near here. The hurricane proof styrofoam block ones popped up in Ireland, I think. Not so pretty but ok. Take away multi decade mortgages, subsidized by the taxpayers, and these would become reality faster than you could say 'unemployed building inspector'.
nice one, made of a shipping container.
http://worldtruth.tv/you-can-turn-a-2000-shipping-container-into-an-epic...
Another good idea, walking into the memory hole?
Those tiny abodes also had enough extra room for a Brit soldier or two to hang their gear.
- Ned
30 million apartments sit empty in China.
They should've invented a house shredder.
China has a population of 1.3 billion people. 30 million is 2%.
The total US population represents the rounding error in estimating the Chinese population.
Instant slum.
The bank and insurance co's will see to that. Imagine if someone could replace their home for less than a year's worth of house payments. Oh, the horror!
Now, PROVE how rugged this method is by building housing in Nepal...
Safe and sustainable, probably really cost effective too.
I'm sure if they build some in Detroit it will revitalize the city.
They tried but the printer had its hubcaps stolen.
Two words: Lumber Liqudators.
If threre's not formadehyde in that thing, I'll eat my hat.
It's mostly cementitious, probably high amounts of coal ash but I doubt formaldehyde.
lol...for those old enough to remember...
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
...Benjamin then goes on to boink Mr.McGuires wife ;-)
My wife says "boink." You and she are the only ones I know who do.
I've often wondered about the origin of the words "bonk" and "shag." The english have a proclivity towards saying words backwards to make them a little less offensive and it occurred to me that bonk and shag could be knob and gash backwards, two of the most popular words in the UK for penis and vj. Just a thought.
two fingers up for your originality; the english longbow archers were less polite, they showed them to the french knights lying on the field once they had shot down their horses; "very unsporting old fella, but very efficient!" said the knights who would never bonk their wives again unless they paid their ransom by shagging their purses !
lotsa' things!
You bet ....gotta prevent those 'Formosan Termites'
Unfortunately, Detroit's problems are caused by the people who live there, not the quality or number of buildings. Putting the existing residents in new buildings won't solve anything.
Best be sho they's fie-proof!
http://www.goobingdetroit.com/
I wonder if it has the intoxicating smell of ditto ink.
Ladies and gents, I present you the future Obamahome. A government-supplied free house is a basic human right, of course.
And just FYI, you're not so much paying for the pile of sticks (or industrial waste, glass and tailings mixed with concrete), you're paying for where that pile of industrial waste is located
I see no necessity to actually use industrial waste in such manufacturing processes.
Replace the waste material components in the neo-concrete mixture with equal amounts of non-waste materials and the cost should not rise significantly.
IF these homes last for more than a decade before being recycled the cost benefits might still be enormous vs. traditional methods.
I watched a home at the end of the block I live on being built two years ago. After the traditional cement foundation and cinderblock basement walls were in place, semi-trailers hauled in pre-fabricated boxes made out of 2x4s and cheap-ass particle wood. The particle board boxes were crane-lifted into postion and literally stapled together with a big fucking industrial machine using approximately 3-foot wide staples.
YES. Fucking prefab particle board boxes and big staples. I shit you NOT.
I was too astonished/aghast to even think to photograph this event and wish to hell I had..
That house made of particle board and staples sold for $747K here in Paramus, New Jersey. There is a fucking Mazerti parked in the driveway, too. Go figure...
As to the issue of housing...
Is it not patently obvious that the prevailing prodcution and materials costs are simply prohibitive and wasteful, and the associated Commercial Bank loan created inflation and debt burdens are absolutely unsustainable under the present economic system?
Why shouldn't such cheaply constructed lodgings be made available in the United States?
Have the poor no right to their own their own meager hovels anymore?
When technology is developed to solve a problem should the first crude iterations damn further developement and impede progress? We are all sitting at manual typewriters or crude 86 boxes atm, right?
Enbrace the promise and let the market sort it out.
I would be happy to see this technology developed if only to impeded deforestation and provide more affordable private home ownership.
At even $50K a pop on a tiny $25K plot such homes would mark a return to affordability last seen in the 1950's when a simple laborer without high school diploma -like my wife's grandfather- could afford to leave the wife at home to raise the children: and pay off the home in 10 years.
I live in today in that 1950's cape build. At over $400K BOTH my wife and I will likely work away the rest of our lives to try and satisfy the outrageous mortgage ...
From before the days of debt slavery, aka the good ol' days;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home
Then, there was this guy. He came along too late in the credit cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller#Geodesic_domes
My barn is a Potlatch corp kit.. circa 1910 and still standing
Is an "A" model the b and C models are all gone...
I had to do some work to it when I was younger byt it will outlast me..........
And in 1910 a working man could have bought it for 1 years wages..........
WTF happened??????????????????
My barn is a Potlatch corp kit.. circa 1910 and still standing
Is an "A" model the b and C models are all gone...
I had to do some work to it when I was younger byt it will outlast me..........
And in 1910 a working man could have bought it for 1 years wages..........
WTF happened??????????????????
people have been trying to ban usury for 3000 years but it keeps coming back
Bank credit happened.
It's pretty simple. When credit is made easily available, the goods being bought inflate in price just as easily. There's nothing complicated about it, just more money chasing the same goods. Bog standard inflation. Exactly the same thing has happened to automobiles, houses and now, university educations.
reality sucks for some, makes due for others. If you're smart enough that the bank doesn't tell you "a 300k home would be better, join all the other welfare shill" and you're making mortgage payments, there is a bountiful killing to be made from the liberation of the masses my friend. A bountiful one.
Once this shit gets sorted out, additive manufacturing will be "where it's at".
Just like most people have a Peee ceee in their home now, 10 years from now you'll buy a file and make your toaster in the manufacturing room of your humble abode.
Union-controlled 3-d printers.
Avro Lancaster Mk 4
meh..let me know when they can print a 20 year old gorgeous blonde on the cheap.
Bill Clinton will buy up the first 50.
I saw a short documentary the other day where doctors successfully duplicated a baby's heart from using CT scans and MRIs of an ill baby that needed heart surgery. They duplicated the baby's heart outside the body and pre-performed the operation they'd need to do. The baby was successfully operated on and is expected to be fine. Awesome technology - so many useful applications. Weapons we won't talk about.
3D printing is changing everything!
This guy is a fucknoob. This is not traditional 3-D printing. He is not using plastic. He is using computer controlled robots. I can't wait for a earthquake. This man is a con artist. He can dip his buildings concrete with turds reduced at 20% recipe blend.
Solution to the Global Food Crisis - Let them eat TURD BURGERS!?http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u1N6QfuIh0g
Shanghai Tower Construction update - Typhoon hits the top of the building 2014http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g7fnzMJMYfc
This building is outstanding. The upper 5 floors have anti-earthquake device. Imagine a ball counter balancing a shifting 128 floor building.
Stick with this 3D house robot guy. Polish your concrete turd.
Agreed
Didn't see any re-inforcing steel or wire mesh in that batter.. for structural elements thats insane.
This does have great applications for exterior wall covering though.
The innovative Chinese found a way of getting rid of industrial tailings,.. and you thought their sheet-rock was poisonous..
You can even do circuit boards now, with conductive fiber (using graphene).
Indeed nice for proto's where you want to keeps your gerbers files on your off-the-grid machine and not in the wild.
oshpark is reasonable for the rest.
Use this technique with hemp based graphene. Affordable and a net gain for the environment for a change. We can also put places like Detraoit back to work by building giant graphene based filtration rigs for the Pacific Ocean (if its not too late). Americans are losing their sense of imagination, thus losing innovation. But what do I know? I'm just some dumb guy posting on the internet too afraid to innovative out of fear of imprisonment. Fuck this world.
Me too bro. Why innovate. The J's will just steal what you create, Zuckerberg or wall st style, either way it won't be yours for long.
http://www.businessinsider.com/graphene-applications-2014-6?op=1
Back to buildings - A Solar Road and a futuristic green building slide show below
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/13/solar-road-power_n_7275278.html
I would be moving out of the apt in that last ZH picture.
LEGO my EGGO
Puts "modular housing" in a whole new light, pretty soon there will be an app for it and the young will be protesting #Big Leggo on Twitter...lol.
If you print it, they will waste it...
Container ships being recycled vertically? lol
There's a 'Tupper Ware' party at the 'Dipsy Dumpster' tonight.
Great invention. Gross colors.
This puts a small dent in China's extensive and thriving slave labor market.
Therefore it won't go far.
"This puts a small dent in China's extensive and thriving slave labor market. "
China has already passed the demographic knee-point and is headed for the same baby-boom bust that the US and Europe are careening into -maybe worse due to the effects of their ill-conceived and mismanaged one-child policy: and the Leadership in China damn well know it.
Without a technology boom and drastic reorientation of the Chinese economy they are headed for a severe aging population crisis to be immediately followed by a spectacular demographic implosion.
intensified by their uniquely high male to female birth ratio (see post about slowing population growth rates).
Bout time.
www.forayintothemarket.com
What, no lumber? Yes this works. And it puts the whole housing recovery "labor chain" of contractors out of work.
Can't wait for the 3D printed ghost cities. Those will rock!
They can 3D print ghost roadside shitizens to inhabit it, too.
Its ridiculous that we dont build our own houses. Pre-built triangular panels with bang in metal connectors and POOF a 2,000 sq foot dome house can be made by one person in 2 days. Once up, you can stay inside it which you finish out the inside with a nice kitchen. Cost? about 25,000. Add 400k for a tiny plot of land ina industrial american slave city and you can be a slave for life paying 6k a year property taxes. er wait, that doesn't really work now does it. nope were screwed.
Its ridiculous that we dont build our own houses. Pre-built triangular panels with bang in metal connectors and POOF a 2,000 sq foot dome house can be made by one person in 2 days. Once up, you can stay inside it which you finish out the inside with a nice kitchen. Cost? about 25,000. Add 400k for a tiny plot of land ina industrial american slave city and you can be a slave for life paying 6k a year property taxes. er wait, that doesn't really work now does it. nope were screwed.
I wonder what a few shiploads of these will do to the American "housing recovery" and it's inflated prices.
I picture these great machines lumbering across the plains shitting out houses. PK Dick was a prophet.
That was a great visual--- keep on rolling>>>
Bob Marley - Buffalo soldier - YouTube
Both interesting and a little saddening.
Interesting in regard to seeing a new solution on offer for an old problem-- but I want to see how it handles expansion and contraction over a period of at least ten years before moving inside one myself.
Saddening to see how we let other countries fly into the future while we chain ourselves to an outmoded status quo. The thought of some captured beholden creature like a Hillary Clinton leading us into the future is enough to make me ponder donating my organs (like right now)
People will probably pay me to not donate my organs.
Hillery would gladly accept your "organ" donation.
Hers is carpet burned and just worn out.
I always assumed it was rusted shut.
Inflation is good propaganda.
All aperson needs is 750 sq ft............
For real the person that figures out how to mass produce them and make them good and make them so that they show individuality and sell for less than 50k not including ground will be rich as hell because the is what the millenialls want me thinks...
Please tell me if I am wrong..........
Sure no problem doing that here.................
i would not bet on this being a way to build any meaningful amount of housing for decades.
but if and when the technology matures, even 100 years from now, it will of course by then be so integrated into a suite of other computerized automation technologies, that the transition to building 3d computer code enabled housing will be more about the full automation of certain types of construction, like mega tract apartment housing for millions of people with all laborers being engineers that work in a prefab housing factory whose work is done by highly sophisticated automated machinery to make everything needed for the onsite 3d printer to do its thing , including a prefab foundation and a system for getting it installed with a 3d printer to print ontop of it.
as it is now, this is still very basic r&d that has been done in the u.s. as shown in the video. maybe there are some major proofs of concept that are advanced---such as some new binder that is radically better than older ones. but a binder is just one thingin a suite of necessary technologies. liek the guy said, you typically ahve 4 different types of printers for projects like this. so there's plenty more to see.....
You should see some of the homes in old England and Scotland. built in 1400 with 2 foot thick walls of stone and mud. Still standing and re done by the owners inside to 21st century digital.
There is a whole show on BBC about these.
Amazing.
Underfloor heating from solar power (most efficient).
Now, this is "disruptive" technology. Cue bank executives lining up at the windows to jump.
It'll be cheaper to knock down your current place and print up a new one than to redecorate.
Just what China needs, another building.
Personally, id hire 20 chinese to go to the top floor and jump up and down for awhile before i'd enter it.
Cheap and fast isn't necessarily great...lol. We'll see how long the cheap and fast last.
Don't forget the Chinese drywall... lawsuits abound... no one to sue.
Does it dig a foundation too?
The Chinese like mobility.
Why not use forms with that magic cement? No geek stuff needed.
"Chinese drywall". I'll pass thank you.
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3D printing is just going to gut the construction industry. Massive deflation and cost cuts. It’ll be amazing for the businesses for a few years until the bottom feeders get into it, and then?
It’ll be like graphic artists in the mid-90’s. If you’ve got a mac, anyone can do it.
And it’s coming like the Tsunami with all those fools on the beach watching.
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Contour Crafting Inventor Dr. Khoshnevis: Widespread 3D Printed Homes in 5 Years, High-Rises in 10 Years
http://3dprint.com/53437/contour-crafting-dr-khoshnevis/
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Not to mention autonomous cars in 5 years.
You think we’re going to put up with union schlubs being paid to sit in a seat NOT driving a vehicle, because the foot-stomping unions see their jobs disappearing?
How about teachers’ jobs with things like VR and the hololens?
How about that Mercedes truck in Nevada, eh? But don’t worry, those trucks are there to take jobs, the mouth-pieces assured us.
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The World’s First Self-Driving Semi-Truck Hits the Road
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http://www.wired.com/2015/05/worlds-first-self-driving-semi-truck-hits-r...
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Just like the Chinese firm that cut 1800 jobs out of 2000, due to the ‘labour shortage’ in China, replacing the workers with robots.
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Construction has begun on the first all-robot manufacturing plant in China
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http://www.businessinsider.com/construction-has-begun-on-the-first-all-r...
“as labour shortages bite and local authorities face the need to spur innovation to counter the economic slowdown.”
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They’re closing the gates behind us.
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V-V