Giant Machine Will Print Out Houses

Researchers in the UK are developing a room-sized printing machine that will make the way we construct buildings today look like something from the Stone Age.

Bid goodbye to beam by beam, brick by brick. Through a technique called rapid prototyping, a giant machine will print out complete walls with the brick, plaster, windows, insulation and conduits for pipes and wires already in place. Rapid prototyping is an umbrella name for a host of technologies through which physical objects can be fabricated directly from CAD (Computer Aided Design) software. Three dimensional forms are sliced into cross sections or layers which are then manufactured in a machine. The layers are bonded together, sometimes through a laser, to form the object. The technology offers several advantages. Intricate objects or objects with geometric complexity are easily produced without need for assembly or inordinate machine setup. The process is also quick and straightforward. Dr Richard Buswell, professor of civil and building engineering at Loughborough University, and his team are constructing a 13'x16' "printing machine" which will implement rapid prototyping. In four years time, they hope to roll out the first prototype wall that will revolutionize the construction industry. Said Buswell: "Maybe straight is not always the best shape. You can build a flat or curvy place and there is no more expense involved." In the past, rapid prototyping was primarily limited to using plastic but now its range of materials is expanding to include ceramics, metals and wood-like paper. But the team at Loughborough University will be using mineral-based materials (cement, lime, clay, gypsum) in their machine. The machine will use one of two techniques to produce the construction walls. It could function like a giant inkjet printer, precisely positioning drops of material. Or it could squeeze out moist material from a large tube. In either method, the material would harden in the air and not need something else such as a laser to fuse the layers together. Walls produced this way could be stronger and more functional as well as more flexible in incorporating innovative design elements. It is also seen as reducing time, labor costs and waste in the construction process. The construction industry, however, is not embracing the technology...at least not yet. Terry Wohlers, head of a consulting firm of rapid prototyping in the US, explained that: "The construction industry is established and traditional. The situation has to be dramatically better or companies won't take the risk. They will do it the way they have always done it." Richard Buswell feels in four years his team will demonstrate "printing" is the better way when they roll out their first wall from their machine. "Doing that wall will get us beyond some of the hurdles and obstacles that are in our way and once we do that we're only limited by our own imagination," he said.