Contour Crafting Video

Some months ago we reported on a really large 3D printing operation: Contour Crafting. This company is building a building-sized 3D printer. What for? Printing buildings, of course! The device (a large sized industrial machine) is essentially a gigantic 3D printer that uses concrete as its print media. By printing the digitized model of a house, you get, well, a house!

Meshverse recently uncovered a video report on the progress of the company and an overview of their technology - including mention of their very special concrete mix.

Via Meshverse

Another Building-Sized Fab

Two posts on gigantor-sized fabs this week! The Information Sciences Institute's Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis's Contour Crafting Technology enables fabbing on a building-sized scale. Apparently the Doctor plans on releasing the USD$1.5M machine very soon, and we will soon see if this type of "personal" manufacturing will work. Be sure to check out the videos, especially the "Video of operation of actual Contour Crafting prototype machine".

We're definitely a long way from having entire complete buildings being simply printed - but this technology will permit onsite fabbing of the basic structure, leaving a portion of the construction for manual labor. It likely won't do electrical wiring or complex installation of tricky components such as furnaces, insulated windows or intricately carved Italian marble lobbies. But I am sure those too will come in time.

Via ISI and MirageStudio7

Printing an Entire Building!

It's not exactly desktop fabbing, but it is definitely interesting. French architectural firm R&Sie plans on building an "Ice Museum" by fabbing the entire building from pre-made wood media. Unlike typical 3D printers that create objects by gradually adding material, the technique to be used for the Ice Museum will be subtractive - sheets of wood will be milled into intricate layers that are then glued together, eventually forming the entire building. Should be interesting to watch.... but duck when the CNC arm comes swinging by!

Via TreeHugger