Home » This tiny house was 3D printed in less than 48 hours
This tiny house was 3D printed in less than 48 hours
By
Lally Odiniv Lilao Editor
on
The concept of 3D printing has taken the world by storm with its innovative capabilities. First, they started printed small objects, then slightly bigger ones, and now they can print a building! How absolutely incredible is that! This is truly some groundbreaking stuff. You may think a 3D-printed house would be something from the future. Well, it looks like the future of home-building is right here, right now!
How this idea came about
Icon, a company that designs 3D printers, partnered up with New Story, a non-profit housing organization. New Story’s vision is to create more affordable homes and in turn, put an end to homelessness. So, together they have undertaken this monumental task – and succeeded!
This tiny house was 3D printed in less than 48 hours
World’s first tiny 3D printed home
The two companies then “built” or, should we say, printed the first 3D-printed home in Austin, Texas. It’s a mere 350 square feet in size, but it’s also absolutely stunning. This tiny house was built to show that 3D printing is not limited to smaller objects, but that it’s indeed possible to create a home as well. Icon’s Vulcan II was the 3D printer used to build this house. It’s basically a large printer connected to a man-operated laptop. Cement is fed into the printer and its arm then deposits the cement onto the ground layer by layer. Doors and windows aren’t printed and they’re only installed after the walls are completed. The printed costs for this home was approximately $10,000, and the whole thing took less than 48 hours to complete. Icon refers to this project as “the first permitted 3D-printed home in the United States.”
Advantages of creating a 3D printed home
This kind of building will be exponentially cheaper, safer, and much faster to build than a conventional house. With almost zero waste, this unconventional method of construction is much more environmentally friendly as well. Building a home this way provides you with more options as far as design is concerned, because traditional methods can’t achieve what a 3D printer can. The fact that building a house like this is far more cost-effective than your usual house is a huge advantage because it means more people will be able to afford it. So far there are only positives to this new, innovative, and advanced way of building a house.
This tiny house was 3D printed in less than 48 hours
What’s next?
Both Icon and New Story were confident that they could create a bigger home in half the time at a cost of only $4,000. They say that when the tiny house was created, the printer wasn’t running at full speed. This means that if it were running at full speed, their goal of printing a bigger and cheaper home in half the time is completely attainable. That’s how they managed to successfully complete the upgraded version of their first prototype a year later. Having triumphantly achieved every goal they had set for themselves, they’re now aiming to build the world’s first 3D-printed community. They plan on constructing dozens of these 3D printed homes in El Salvador.
Looks like 3D-printed homes are the way of the future as far as construction technology is concerned. What a truly remarkable way to build a home that can be more affordable, sustainable, durable, and let’s not forget stylish, in half the time that it would take to build a home the traditional way.
