Mighty Buildings announced the opening of a new factory in Monterrey, Mexico.
The California-based company is one of only a few that offer 3D printed building services. However, while most of the participants in that market employ a form of concrete extrusion in situ, Mighty Buildings’ approach is very different.
Mighty Building uses a centralized factory approach, where they use a specialized polymer system to 3D print building components. These are then assembled in the factory to form complete home “modules”. The modules are then loaded onto semitrailer flatbed trucks for “drop in” installation at the building sites.
Once at the site, the traditional trades can take over to complete the home build with HVAC, plumbing, electrical, etc.
Their approach offers the ability to scale up production in a way their competitors cannot. For example, a concrete extrusion system must be erected, used, taken down, transported and reassembled at the next building site.
Meanwhile, Mighty Buildings simply keeps running their centralized factory 24/7 to pump out more 3D printed buildings. All they need are more trucks to haul the products to customers.
A constraint on Mighty Buildings is that their factory tends to serve a regional area that can be reached efficiently by trucks and service personnel. For that reason their recent activities have largely been focused near their initial California factory.
The news is that Mighty Buildings has established a new factory in Monterrey. Evidently the recent investment obtained by the company has been put to good use.
Given an understanding of their approach, you can well imagine how important this will be: it literally opens up an entirely new region for the company.
This, I believe, is their long term strategy: open up regional factories in a variety of locations to expand their presence. Then, as the popularity of the system grows, expand those factories.
This could be a viable strategy, as Mighty Buildings explains:
”The establishment of manufacturing facilities in Monterrey is the next step in Mighty Buildings’ strategy to transform the way the world builds homes, while helping to solve the climate and housing crises. Using innovative material science, robotics and automation, Mighty Buildings can create climate-resilient, carbon-neutral housing that is comfortable, beautiful and can resist severe weather including hurricanes and earthquakes. This is made possible by Mighty Buildings’ proprietary concrete-free composite stone material that is as much as 5x stronger than concrete, yet up to 30% lighter in weight, and costs as much as 15% less per square foot.”
They say the new factory should be able to produce 1-2 homes per day, which is quite significant: how many homes per day can your traditional builder produce?
Mighty Buildings has a very different strategy from other construction 3D printing players, and time will tell whether it will succeed.
Via Mighty Buildings
