A large and renowned American startup Icon is making massive use of 3D printers to build low-cost houses, with total agility and safety and with optimization throughout the process. In practice, the project aims to provide housing for people in poverty and extreme poverty in the city of Austin, Texas, and also in several poor communities In Mexico. See the project in full!
According to the company itself, this method is viable and can also make construction cheaper, generating a direct contribution to combating the housing deficit. While the technology is still in development, Icon claims it is possible to build a home for half the cost and time of traditional means.
In a very practical and didactic way, the project makes use of a printer with 10 meters high created by Icon itself, with full capacity to erect all the walls of a small house in just 24 hours. In addition to not having to stop “to rest”, the machine has high efficiency and can use cheaper materials to deposit, layer by layer, the compound that forms walls of up to 2.5 meters tall.
Prior to 3D printing, the installation of building foundations is traditionally carried out. With the walls erected by the 3D printer, the finishing and adjustment processes, plumbing, electrical installation, in addition to the roof assembly, are carried out in a traditional way by civil construction workers in the region.
To give you an idea, the printer can handle assembling the three houses simultaneously, with full operation and without any problems. To accomplish this feat, the machine reads a certain digital file that guides the movement of the printing bases and, like smaller-scale 3D printers, deposit the material to form the walls with complete safety layer by layer through the extrusion process.
It is important to point out that although the houses with the 3D printer are low cost, the Icon company also guarantees that the house resulting from the printing has greater resistance to natural disasters, as is the case of hurricanes, which are quite common in this region of North America at certain times of the year.
With additional information: Fast Company
